Prevention of Driving under the Influence of Drugs Bill [HL]

Lord Dixon-Smith: My Lords, I beg to introduce a Bill to make it an offence to drive a motor vehicle while under the influence of a controlled drug; to provide powers for police officers to undertake roadside drug tests on drivers; to provide that statistics of drug-related road accidents and deaths are collected and collated; and for connected purposes. I beg to move that this Bill be now read a first time.
	Moved, That the Bill be now read a first time.—(Lord Dixon-Smith.)
	On Question, Bill read a first time, and to be printed.

Business of the House: Standing Order 47

Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean: My Lords, on behalf of my noble and learned friend Lord Williams of Mostyn, I beg to move the first Motion standing in his name on the Order Paper.
	Moved, That Standing Order 47 (No two stages of a Bill to be taken on one day) be dispensed with on Monday 17th March to allow the Consolidated Fund (No. 2) Bill to be taken through all its remaining stages.—(Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean.)

On Question, Motion agreed to.

Business of the House: Debate, 17th March

Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean: My Lords, on behalf of my noble and learned friend I beg to move the second Motion standing in his name on the Order Paper.
	Moved, That the debate on the Motion in the name of the Lord Goodhart set down for Monday 17th March shall be limited to three hours.—(Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean.)

On Question, Motion agreed to.

Health (Wales) Bill

Lord Evans of Temple Guiting: My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.
	Moved, That the amendments for the Report stage be marshalled and considered in the following order:
	Clause 1, Schedule 1, Clause 2, Schedule 2, Clauses 3 to 7, Schedules 3 and 4, Clauses 8 to 10.—(Lord Evans of Temple Guiting.)

On Question, Motion agreed to.

Regional Assemblies (Preparations) Bill

Lord Rooker: My Lords, I beg to move that the House do now resolve itself into Committee on this Bill.
	Moved, That the House do now resolve itself into Committee.—(Lord Rooker.)

On Question, Motion agreed to.
	House in Committee accordingly.
	[The CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES in the Chair.]

Baroness Hanham: moved Amendment No. 1:
	Before Clause 1, insert the following new clause—
	"REGIONAL BOUNDARIES
	(1) Before making any order under this Act the Secretary of State shall—
	(a) invite all local authorities in England to submit to him proposals for the creation of regions for the purposes of this Act;
	(b) invite such other persons and bodies as appear to him to represent relevant interests throughout England to submit to him proposals for the creation of regions for the purposes of this Act;
	(c) upon receipt of submissions in response to paragraphs (a) and (b) invite the Electoral Commission to comment on the submissions and to make proposals to the Secretary of State for the creation of regions for the purposes of this Act having regard to—
	(i) the desirability of all regions being, in so far as is compatible with sub-paragraph (ii), of approximately equal population size; and
	(ii) the need to reflect the identities and interests of local communities;
	(d) publish the proposals made to him by the Electoral Commission under paragraph (c); and
	(e) make an order creating regions for the purposes of this Act, having regard to the proposals published under paragraph (d).
	(2) For the purposes of this section "relevant interests" means professional bodies, trades unions, voluntary organisations, faith groups, political parties, business organisations and community organisations.
	(3) For the purposes of subsection (1)(a) and (b), the Secretary of State shall set out a timetable for the giving of responses to him."

Baroness Hanham: The Bill seeks to facilitate the establishment of eight regional assemblies within England by defining the process by which referenda will be held. One of the mainstay arguments that the Government have used when trying to persuade us that regional government is a positive step forward is that England has prominent regional differences and that decentralising a degree of power from central government to elected regional assemblies will allow policy to be tailored to the differing needs of those in different areas. So we are told that public services will meet local needs and people will no longer feel that Whitehall dictates all.
	However, if the Government have their heart set on the establishment of regional assemblies, which would be a fundamental constitutional change and involve a major reorganisation of local government, it is irresponsible and democratically untenable that a preliminary review of those boundaries is not carried out first. Amendments Nos. 1 and 10 make such a review the primary requirement preceding the calling of a referendum.
	I am sure Members of the Committee will recall the heartfelt concerns of a number of noble Lords at Second Reading who felt little allegiance to the regions to which they had been assigned with little or no regard. As presently constituted the regions are huge, the boundaries unnatural and arbitrarily drawn. My noble friend Lady Seccombe pointed out that living in Warwickshire she has within a 10-mile radius of her home the West Midlands, the East Midlands, the South East and the South West regions. Regional identity should not be swept under the carpet in the interests of utility, which is what we feel the Government are doing.
	From the White Paper it is clear that the Government believe that a debate on the composition of the regions and their definitions would be a waste of time. That is a somewhat dismissive view of an area of significant constitutional change. However, the Government have, without consultation, decided to stick with the administrative boundaries used by the Government Offices for the Regions and the regional development agencies—regions that have no coherence or points of community identity.
	Clause 26 of the Bill makes it clear that the references to regions in the Bill are those defined in the Regional Development Agencies Act 1998. There are various views of how those regions came about, but since they were created for administrative rather than electoral purposes, they are unlikely to have been the subject of the degree of consultation that we propose in Amendment No. 1.
	In the White Paper the Government say that they have not,
	"completely ruled out in the longer term the possibility of adopting boundaries for regional assemblies that do not follow the existing boundaries".
	But that is simply fanciful. Why refuse to review the system of boundaries at this stage in advance of the re-organisation of the local government substructure—a matter to which we shall return at a later stage—if there is even the smallest chance that at some time in the future those boundaries will be altered? That undermines the validity of a referendum—a result obtained on the basis of the boundaries as put forward at the moment. Surely it would be more regular, constitutionally and democratically, to sort out all the above details before asking people to vote for the proposals.
	The boundaries of the proposed regions do not even square with people's perceptions. The number of people who do not know which region they supposedly live in is but one manifestation of the difficulty. A Mori poll in the North West region revealed that only 28 per cent could identify the region in which they lived, 12 per cent named entirely the wrong region and 60 per cent had simply no idea which region they lived in. The artificial North West region stretches from Crewe in Cheshire to Carlisle in Cumbria. Like many other regions, it has rural and metropolitan communities with different needs and characteristics. Cheshire has more affinity with the Midlands. Staffordshire and Cumbria are far apart. Cumbria might better be placed in the North East. The artificial—

Lord Rooker: I am sorry to interrupt the noble Baroness as she gives us a historical breakdown of the regional boundaries, but anyone would think that the present Government set them. The boundaries that she fundamentally attacks now were set by the previous Conservative government. I do not understand the purpose of this part of her speech.

Baroness Hanham: It is abundantly clear. I said that, where the regions are formed, they have the regional development agency boundaries. I also said that it was unclear where they were originally formed. Historically, they go back to 1948. But this Government accept them as the boundaries. We argue that, for the purposes of an electoral system rather than an administrative one, they are completely inappropriate because they do not relate to communities or local identities. This amendment suggests that the Government provide, construct and look at smaller regions that have an identity.
	To conclude my earlier remarks, there are disparities not only in the make-up of the regions but in the population. The North East region has a population of around 2.5 million whereas the South East region has a population of 8.5 million. There is very little credibility. It will be difficult to construct constituencies and to ensure that there is any regional identity unless the population has a say in the matter.

Lord Tordoff: I am grateful to the noble Baroness for giving way. The situation will be made more difficult if she persists in believing that Cheshire looked towards the Midlands. It looks towards Manchester and Liverpool—I speak as Lord Tordoff of Knutsford, which is in the good county of Cheshire. There is no question that Knutsford looks north, north-west and north-east, not south.

Baroness Hanham: I am sure that the noble Lord will have an opportunity to develop his comments in a minute, as soon as I finish my remarks.
	In conclusion, the redrawing of the boundaries will not be easy. But it must be done before the new constitutional arrangement takes place. We do not want to underestimate the extent to which the Bill proposes fundamental changes, not only to the constitutional arrangements of the country, but to the democratic arrangements. We should not be too glib about that. We should take seriously what regional government means, if that is what the Government are intent on introducing. I beg to move.

Baroness Hamwee: We on these Benches have made no secret of our concern about the regional boundaries, which, as the Minister reminded the Committee, were created by the previous government, though for a different purpose. They were created for administrative reasons. One wonders whether they were created to continue control from Whitehall rather than to devolve it. They were used for the purposes of the regional development agency boundaries so that we could get on with that proposal. I must confess that during the passage of the Regional Development Agencies Bill I did not support change of the boundaries. Hindsight is a great thing.
	We have heard some examples. I thought that my noble friend was going to say that Cheshire was a unique entity—sui generis is perhaps the term to use. Many people living in Cheshire would not wish to be identified with anywhere else. But there are identity problems elsewhere. I understand that Shropshire feels closer to Gloucestershire than to Birmingham in the South West, although I cannot speak directly about that. Under the proposals, Gloucestershire is allied with Cornwall. We know about the problems in the South East.
	But to what extent is the purpose of this amendment to get it right? We know that the Conservatives do not wish to see regional government in place. I cannot help thinking that the amendment is simply a recipe for delay. Under the amendment as tabled, several conditions must be met, including much consultation—I would not argue with that. But I wonder whether it is dealt with in a limited way, given that "relevant interests" is so closely defined.
	The wording of subsection (1)(c)(ii) of the new clause, which provides for,
	"the need to reflect the identities and interests of local communities",
	is familiar. The words were used in the Local Government Act 1992 in the context of the proposals for structural change to local government. But it is significant that they were printed alongside the condition that the Local Government Commission should have regard to the need,
	"to secure effective and convenient local government".
	We are about securing effective and convenient government at all stages. If we must have such conditions, I would not wish to leave that out.
	There is also the question of size, which worries me. This is a diverse country and, of course, the populations of different parts of the country are different. I do not understand the need for size to be a criterion. That suggests that there is a need to create a level playing-field so that the regions can compete for power between themselves. The regions differ in size, but that does not undermine the identity of any region. I say that without disagreeing with the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, about the proposed South East region, which is an absurdity. I accept that, but I do not think that the amendment is the way to go about things.
	I come back to my first point. We know the attitude of the Conservatives to this important democratic proposal. Critical as we on these Benches are of the way in which the Government are going about things, we do not wish to see regional government threatened. I fear that that is what the new clause is aimed at.

Baroness Blatch: Does the noble Baroness agree that many of her colleagues in different parts of the country are concerned about the shape of the boundaries and look to Parliament—particularly this House—to do something about them and, at least, have a proper debate about them? If possible, we should ensure that boundaries are readjusted to come more closely into line with community interests. The noble Baroness's colleagues say that: does she speak for them?

Baroness Hamwee: I speak for all my colleagues, including those on these Benches. I said that we had concerns about boundaries, and we need to get them right. However, we should not delay the process, as the provision in the amendment would do. The issue must be addressed, but, reading between the lines, I do not believe that this is the way to go about it, if we are to have regional government in the form in which we all want to see it.

Lord Waddington: At Second Reading, the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, was extremely frank. As usual, he was entirely honest in his explanation of the Bill's purpose. However, I can hardly say that I came away with the impression that he was a great enthusiast for the Bill. I was moderately surprised, therefore, when he intervened during the remarks made by my noble friend.
	It is sensible to examine the boundaries and ask whether they should be used as boundaries for electoral purposes. Unusually, the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, was wrong, when she said that the boundaries were set for the purposes of the regional development agencies. In fact, they were set up to demarcate the boundaries of the Government Offices for the Regions. They were drawn on the map to show where the area of responsibility of one Government Office ended and that of another began.
	It is ludicrous to say that, because the boundaries were set at the beginning of the 1990s, they should be the boundaries for elected assemblies in the regions. One has seen example after example of the failure of the boundaries to create an area in which there was any obvious identity of interest or any loyalty among the people living within the boundaries for the area.

Baroness Hamwee: I corrected my reference to the regional development agencies. I appreciate that the boundaries were set in the early 1990s. The Regional Development Agencies Act 1998 reflected those boundaries.

Lord Waddington: My point is straightforward. Whether we like the idea of elected regional assemblies or not, we ought to make some effort to get the boundaries right and have regions that are understandable to the people who will vote for the assemblies.
	The Minister acknowledged the absurdity of some of the boundaries at Second Reading. Referring to remarks made by the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, about Cornwall, he said:
	"I fully accept her point. I drew attention to the fact that the regions are government regions. There is one example that I always give to people. I have never measured the distance, but about 40 miles south of the centre of Birmingham is the small town of Chipping Camden, which is in Gloucestershire. It cannot be much more than 40 miles from Birmingham, but it is in the same region as Land's End".
	That was a plain acknowledgement of the absurdity of it all. The Minister went on:
	"That is the reality. The noble Baroness, Lady Seccombe, made the same point, giving examples of boundaries where she lives in Warwickshire. It is a difficulty. I do not deny it".—[Official Report, 20/2/03; col. 1330.]
	If it is a difficulty, it is the Government's duty to address it.
	There are major issues in the North West. Should Cumbria be in the North West or the North East? That question should be addressed now, before we launch ourselves into this exercise. Obviously, it will take time, but it will be a long process anyhow, as the Minister has often said.
	The noble Lord, Lord Tordoff, challenged my noble friend's assertion that Cheshire had links with Staffordshire, Shropshire and Derbyshire. It depends which part of Cheshire one lives in. My noble friend was, I think, reading from a paper given to us a day or two ago by representatives of Cheshire County Council. They made the point that, in the north of Cheshire, one will certainly find oneself in a commuting area in which all the links are with Greater Manchester, as I know well. In south Cheshire, however, one begins to see links with the counties further south, rather than to the north.
	The North West is not the best area in which to look for examples of absurd boundaries. We heard of plenty of those in our earlier discussions. It is ridiculous that Watford should be in East Anglia, or that Banbury should be in the South East. It is absurd that Cheltenham should be in the South West. I could go on and on. It is the Government's duty not just to say, "These are convenient boundaries, and go ahead we shall"; they must get the thing right, if they want to go ahead at all.

Baroness Warnock: I support the amendment with some hesitation, for I have not made up my mind whether I am for or against regional assemblies. The worst disaster for the setting up of regional assemblies would be if the boundaries had later to be changed because they did not work. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Waddington, that the matter ought to be settled or, at least, debated, before we begin setting up the assemblies.
	It was bad enough when the county boundaries were, as it seemed to many people who were loyal to their county, arbitrarily changed. I think of the obvious case of the ridings of Yorkshire. Not only would it be confusing to start on the process of establishing regional assemblies, rightly or wrongly, and then have to change the boundaries of the areas that they were meant to serve; it would cast doubt on the validity of the whole process.

Lord Shutt of Greetland: I believe that many of these boundaries are in the eye of the beholder. They are not perfect and they can change. It is clear that Amendment No. 1 is intended to be an impediment to regional government. Therefore, I oppose it.
	I think that there are three positions as regards regional government. The first position is stated in the proposed new clause. The Conservative Benches regard regional government as "big" local government. That is a problem. Their mind-set is big local government. On these Benches, regional government is about democratising that which is in the regions already and further devolving from central government. I believe that the third position is that taken by the Government, who seem to be promoting an elected regional advisory committee. We live in hope that we can build on that. Therefore, we are generally supportive of the Bill in order to build upon it and make it real.
	Clearly, this amendment is about impeding regional government so that it does not happen. The Conservative Benches are worried that it is big local government. They may acknowledge that.

Lord Bowness: In my speech at Second Reading I said—I repeat it only to establish my bona fides and perhaps to chide the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, for being somewhat dismissive of this amendment and its motives—that I am perhaps less hostile to the concept of regional government than some of my colleagues. However, I do not believe that that is what we would be getting.
	Amendment No. 1 is not about the principle of regional assemblies. It is about whether this paving legislation will set up real regions to which communities can relate. If that is not done, the regional assemblies will fail. I repeat that this amendment is not about whether we have the regional assemblies. It is a comprehensive amendment that sets out all that might be required to ensure that proper boundaries and regions are established.
	I accept that a much slimmer procedure could be proposed. If my memory serves me right, when a major local government reorganisation occurred in New Zealand, the Government established a commission with far-reaching powers to establish boundaries and merge authorities. The quid pro quo to that was that the Government accepted the recommendations of the commission and did not insist on debating every proposal in Parliament. That saved a considerable amount of time.
	The response of the Government to this amendment will inform us whether we are referring to devolved powers or, in the words of the noble Lord, Lord Shutt of Greetland, merely big local government. I believe that the proposal is about big local government. Nothing that has been said or put on paper suggests that there will be anything but big local authorities. There is little or nothing to suggest that real powers will be devolved.
	Leaving that matter to one side, the argument concerning a proper examination of the boundaries is hard to deny. I ask noble Lords' forgiveness for repeating what I said at Second Reading. I referred to the discussion which took place in Committee on the Regional Development Agencies Bill on 7th October 1998. The noble Lord, Lord Whitty, stated:
	"If and when regional assemblies are established, there will clearly be a need for new primary legislation to establish them. Parliament will then have the opportunity to consider the extent and the boundaries of the regions proposed in that context. We are not committed to using these precise boundaries for regional assemblies at a later stage".—[Official Report, 7/10/98; col. 442.]
	Those are the kind of assurances given to your Lordships' House in response to amendments put forward at that time. It was argued that if we proceeded with regional development agencies and their attendant regional chambers on the boundaries of the existing government offices, we would be prejudicing the future. We were assured that the future would not be prejudiced. Today, some five years later, it is clear that the future was being prejudiced when that Bill went through.
	During the same debate, in justifying not involving the Boundary Commission, the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, stated:
	"we are not involved with electoral constituencies or bodies of democratic accountability here;"—
	namely, regional development agencies—
	"we are dealing with development agencies and the administrative areas of those development agencies. It would not be appropriate, given the expertise and the system of working that the Boundary Commission has adopted in the past, to apply it to this area".—[Official Report, 7/10/98; col. 450.]
	Therefore, I wonder what has changed in that time. What are the arguments to justify the boundaries of what are alleged to be democratic bodies—not merely democratic bodies exercising allegedly more than local government functions—while apparently exercising devolved functions of government? These are questions that should be answered at this stage, before any reference to the Boundary Commission is dismissed as causing delay.

Baroness Blatch: I hope that my noble friend will forgive me for taking issue with a point which he and the noble Lord, Lord Shutt, made. It would be unfortunate if at the outset of the Bill we were to play party politics with this issue. I listened carefully to the Second Reading debate and I have read in Hansard the report of the debate since. I have also had a great number of discussions outside the House. There are people from all parties—in particular, from the Liberal Democrat Party—who take different views about regional assemblies. In particular, they are fighting hard against the shape of the boundaries. It would be unfortunate if this debate was overridden by suspecting the motives of those of us on these Benches who are saying, at the outset of this Bill, that if this constitutional change is to happen, it is important that there should be a healthy debate in this House—and in the character of this House, which is to have open, constructive and fair debate—about the shape of the boundaries. Ultimately, there should be a parliamentary determination of those boundaries reflecting views from all parties. Therefore, I believe that that is unfair.
	The noble Lord, Lord Shutt, and my noble friend, referred to big local government. This is not big local government. It is certainly big government because it is anything but local government. It is big centralised government. The Minister gave examples at Second Reading. Powers are not being ceded from the top down—from central government to regional government. They are being ceded upwards from county and unitary authorities to the regions. The control, but not the powers, is moving down. There will be influence over issues, but not power.
	The only example which the noble Lord very readily and almost unthinkingly gave was that of housing. There will not be determinating powers. There will not be powers in the real sense that we understand powers in government. Yes, it will be influence, but powers will reside still with the departments in Whitehall.
	This is big government—control from central government. I hope that the Liberal Democrats will bury their political prejudices in this matter and argue for all people of all political persuasions that this is an important debate that should take place at the outset of the Bill and not be subordinated to party hack politics.

Lord Waddington: Before my noble friend sits down, is she aware that the Liberal Democrats on Lancashire County Council have firmly expressed their opposition to this measure?

Baroness Blatch: My noble friend makes the point for me. That is right. That is why I believe that this is the last Chamber in the world where we should play party politics with a matter so constitutionally important.

Lord Stoddart of Swindon: If, like the noble Lord, Lord Shutt, I thought that the amendment sought to undermine the whole concept of regional government, I should support it with alacrity. But I fear that it does not. The amendment accepts regionalisation; it proposes that the regional boundaries should not be decided now, but after due consultation with many people and bodies. In my view that is an acceptance of the principle of regional government, which, as I made clear at Second Reading, I am completely against. I believe in local, democratic, government. I believe that regionalisation will undermine that, not complement or improve it.
	The present regional structure was set up following the passing of the Maastricht Treaty in 1992, when it was decided that the regional aid distributed by the European Commission, using our taxpayers' money, should no longer be administered through central government but through regions. The existing regions, which under the present Government became regional development bodies, were set up to make that administratively possible; namely, to administer the direct link between the regions and Brussels. That is the history.
	Many people in this country believe that regionalisation does not have so much to do with good local government as with good administrative arrangements between Brussels and the European Union. There are those who would not agree; but I believe it, as do many others. Therefore, if we are to have regionalisation, we must give grave consideration to what we intend to do with the regions, and to how they should be geographically set out.
	It is no good saying that the present regions are set in stone. That is nonsensical. A great many people have different ideas about where the regional boundaries should be, even if they agree with regional government itself. I sat on the committee of the association of municipal corporations dealing with the reorganisation of local government in 1968; we gave evidence to the Royal Commission. If my memory serves me right, it was suggested that there should be 12 indirectly elected provincial councils. So, even then, the proposal was not for eight regional authorities but for 12.
	Like the noble Lord, Lord Waddington, I worry that an association between some of the areas contained in the existing regions is nonsensical. I live in Reading. My region will include Lambourn, in the Lambourn Valley—which trains marvellous racehorses—and Dover and Folkestone in the east. There is no compatibility between the two areas. Their interests are entirely different and would be difficult to reconcile.
	Perhaps I may give a recent example of what happens when regions are too big. The south-east regional planning committee recommended that there should be extra building in Reading, on the flood plain. Why on earth would it make such a recommendation when the areas it suggested were flooded? Yet it did so. If we are to set up these regions—which, I repeat, I am against—we really must be very careful that we do so in such a way that they will work, and not simply between Brussels and this country. The Chancellor of the Exchequer is beginning to understand this—according to his article in The Times. If we are going to set up regions at all, we ought to be doing it in such a way that there is compatibility, and agreement, between the people who will be affected.
	As I said, I am split. I am in great difficulty. I am in a dilemma. I do not support the proposal because I do not support regional government; yet I believe that if we are to have regional government, it is better to set it up after what is suggested in the proposed new clause has taken place. I do not think that the amendment will be pressed to a vote today, but perhaps we can consider the matter further and return to it on Report.

The Earl of Caithness: First, I apologise to the Committee for not being able to be present for the Second Reading debate. I was unable to stay for the whole debate; therefore, I did not put my name on the list of speakers.
	One of the great advantages of this place is that it is a Chamber of the United Kingdom. Therefore, I can bring some experience to our proceedings of how regional assemblies are working in Scotland. I shall set out my stall by saying that I am pro regional government—whatever regional government means. We have it at the moment: some of the county councils are good regional government. I am also, however, in the right circumstances, pro regional assemblies. There can be merit in putting areas together. Furthermore, in the right circumstances, I am pro unitary authorities. But the size of the region, its powers, and how it will work are crucial considerations.
	Like the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart of Swindon, I live in what is classified as the South East region. I spent a great deal of my life in the Banbury area, where at one time I was a land agent. Looking at the map of the South East, my reckoning is that the logical place to have a regional assembly would be at Gatwick.
	On a good day, the journey to Gatwick would take me two hours-plus from Banbury—providing that there is no hold-up, or fog, on the M25. A person living in Broadstairs, in Kent—most of the people in Banbury, with due respect to them, probably do not have a clue as to exactly where Broadstairs is; they know that it is probably in Kent but they cannot put a finger on it, and most of the people in Broadstairs probably do not know where Banbury is, which is not so surprising—will have an equivalent journey time to Gatwick of about two hours. It will take those poor people who live on the Isle of Wight—such as our current Lord Chairman—at least three hours to get to Gatwick, excluding the ferry journey; and that will be on a good day.
	We have exactly the same problem in Caithness. Our regional assembly is in Inverness, and it takes our councillors two-and-a-half hours to get there. If the weather is bad, they have to make the journey the night before. One Liberal councillor has said that it is "madness", and "a complete waste of time", to have a regional assembly so far away. In the Highlands council, your vote can be counted only if you are in the chamber. A 20-minute meeting and a vote on the Budget meant that that Liberal councillor had to leave Caithness the night before in order to travel down to Inverness for a debate lasting 20 minutes, and to cast his vote. He then had to make the journey back. What a waste of time and money! Yet the principle behind parts of this Bill is absolutely right. Some regional assemblies could be beneficial. That is why I support reviewing the boundaries now. If that does not happen, whatever is said about the boundaries being able to change, I have a nasty suspicion that they will not change. They can get set in stone, and it becomes too difficult for the Government to change them. It becomes too difficult for the whole bureaucracy. If the process towards a referendum is started, people assume what the boundaries are, which then get set in stone. I think the amendment is far from being a delaying measure. It is a practical measure.
	The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, disappointed me. She started off very encouragingly, like her friends up in Caithness, saying that she was concerned about the boundaries. However, she did not say what she was going to do about them. I had hoped that she would suggest a positive alternative to what we have before us. However she does not like what either we or the Government are proposing.
	The noble Lord, Lord Shutt, said that regional assemblies would democratise what is there. I ask the noble Lord to talk to his Liberal friends up in Caithness. If he talked to the noble Lord, Lord Maclennan of Rogart, or John Thurso MP, he would find it is far from democratising what is there. It is not producing better services. It is quite different in Caithness. Whereas decisions used to be made locally, they are now being made in Inverness, and then passed down the line. That is not good for local government or local involvement in government. We must learn from some of the mistakes we made in reforming local government—and I include my own party. We must not take government further away from the people, but bring it back to the people.

Lord Greaves: The noble Baroness, Lady Blatch, issued various challenges to us, so I believe I am justified in replying to some of them. Debate on the first amendment is always broad-ranging. Some of the issues raised relate to the amendment; others relate to other countries. We have just heard the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, talk about Scotland, to which this Bill does not refer. He put his finger on a very important point. There is no regional assembly meeting in Inverness. There is no such body. There is a local government body, the Highlands and Islands Council. It may well be far too large for the area it covers. People have to travel from Thurso to Inverness to vote, and then go back again. That may all be true—although it is in Scotland, not in England. However, it illustrates a very important part of the case we are putting forward. Various broad questions have been discussed. Are the new regional assemblies, which essentially are going to be big local authorities taking most of their powers—insofar as they have powers—upward from local authorities? Are they going to be genuine regional bodies which take over the powers of the very large number of unelected and often only remotely accountable bodies—quangos—which exist in the regions at the moment? Are they going to involve devolution of powers from Westminster, as happened in Scotland and, to a lesser degree, in Wales?
	That is the huge question mark over the whole of the Government's intentions on regional government. It will arise during this Bill. It will arise even more when and if—

Lord Waddington: I do not understand why the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, is so worried. There is no question about it at all. If there was a question, it has been answered by the Minister. He plainly said:
	"I think that the penny has dropped during Second Reading of the legislation that there are no new powers and no new funds".—[Official Report, 5/3/03; col.813.]

Lord Greaves: The noble Lord, Lord Waddington, asks me why I am so worried. That is precisely why. We believe the Government may be seriously and fundamentally wrong on these matters, which will have to be debated at a later stage. I remind the noble Lord that legislation gets passed by Parliament. The Government may have their views and a huge amount of influence on what gets passed. Nevertheless it is Parliament that passes it. Until that happens, we do not know what the answers to the questions are going to be.

Lord Waddington: I must ask the noble Lord to give way again. The Government—quite wrongly—have decided to go ahead without first presenting a Bill which defines the powers of the new assemblies. We can only go on what government spokesmen say. They have said that there will be no new powers. It is ridiculous to assume that something entirely different will happen, in spite of that clear commitment by the Government. The Government have told us what will happen.

Lord Greaves: The Government have told us what they want to happen and what they think will happen. That may be different from what actually happens in the real world. We only have to go back to the Greater London Authority Bill. When it left Parliament, it was in a very different state from when it came to Parliament. It still may not have been perfect or ideal. It may not have been what the Liberal Democrats would have produced. Nevertheless, the Act that was finally passed was very different from the Bill that was first presented to Parliament. That is not unusual. I hope that the Conservatives will join with us in significantly improving legislation which in due course will set up regional government. We will find out whether that happens.
	However, this amendment is not really about powers at all. It is about regional boundaries. I want to turn to that question. It is always easy to ridicule a particular proposal for a territorial area—whether administrative or governmental—by looking at places on the periphery and saying they have far more in common with people who live just over the border than they have with the core or main part of their area. That always applies whether it is a region, a local community or whatever it happens to be. It is in the very nature of territorial areas and boundaries. At Mow Cop in the south of Cheshire, the county boundary with Staffordshire runs along the hilltop next to the folly and the quarries. That does not mean that the boundary at Mow Cop between Staffordshire and Cheshire is stupid. It may be that the whole of that boundary should be redrawn locally, and all of it put into one area or the other. The fact that people living next door to each other in Mow Cop are now in the present counties is not an argument for saying that those counties are somehow wrong and should be abolished.
	It is always the case that if lines are drawn on maps, then some places near or on those boundaries will have more in common with people just the other side than they have with the main centre of the area, the region, the local authority, the country, or whatever it happens to be.

Lord Bowness: I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. I have heard no one suggest that it is the peripheries that are the problem. There are many major problems about proceeding with the regions, as they have been established administratively as government offices. It is about size—which indeed raises the question of how many should be set up. It is not about peripheries. Controversially, one could ask whether London should be a free-standing region in its own right, or part of another region. It is no good quoting other capital cities in Europe, because they are smaller. Those arguments are not the subject of this amendment, but they are much bigger than just the issue of people who live on the margins. No one has suggested that that is the issue.

Lord Greaves: I agree with the noble Lord. I was about to make that point. I was replying to most of the criticism of the boundaries of the regions made by his colleagues. They have talked about places in Gloucestershire that are in the same region as Land's End but are nearer to Birmingham. That is a question of periphery and the margins. I live almost on the boundary of Lancashire and Yorkshire, which will be the boundary between the North West and the Yorkshire region. Some of the places near to where I live were moved out of Yorkshire into Lancashire in the 1974 local government reorganisation. There may be arguments that places like that should be moved into one area or another, but that is a peripheral issue. It is inevitable in any carve-up of an area into territories. It is not a serious argument to be entertained.
	The noble Lord, Lord Bowness, has, however, identified the serious possibility of dispute over whether larger areas should be detached from regions and made into separate regions of their own or moved from one region to another. The obvious area of dispute in the North West, to which I think the noble Lord referred, is Cumbria. There is an argument as to whether Cumbria is a sensible area. Some say that it is unified by the Lake District, which is in the middle of it, and that it would be silly to split the Lake District between different areas. However, the affinity of people in south Cumbria is certainly to the North West. There is no doubt that Barrow-in-Furness and the south lakeland areas such as Milnthorpe and Kendal are in the North West. The only doubt is whether north Cumbria—north Cumberland, as it was—covering the Carlisle and Penrith area and perhaps the west coast around Workington is actually in the North East. These are peripheral areas that will always be difficult to put into a region. The geographical reality is that anyone who lives in Workington is, by definition, a long way from anywhere.
	There is an argument for having a major debate about the issue. It is a matter of judgment as to whether such a debate, which would take a long time, should be allowed to hold up the Government's plan to go ahead not with regionalisation of the whole country—nobody is suggesting that—but with giving some regions the ability to have a referendum.
	I do not think that the Bill will be applied to the whole country. In some areas, regional boundaries are disputed. The whole of the South East is perhaps the greatest example. There is no consensus on what the regions are and how they fit. Another important question arises over Cornwall. Should it be a separate region on its own, because of its identity and its distance from everywhere else? These are major issues.
	If there were any chance of the Government going ahead with referendums in those areas, I would have more sympathy with the amendment. However, in practice that is not the case.

Baroness Hanham: Does the noble Lord agree that the Government intend to introduce regional government? If they intend to introduce it in totality at some stage, it is impossible that they should not set out the framework for that regional government before any further decisions are taken. I challenge the noble Lord on whether it is possible to argue that, because it will be all right for a couple of regions up in the North East and the North West, which may or may not be totally happy about the idea, it will not matter whether the other regions are all hopelessly wrong. We are dealing with the principle here. We are not on the tatty edges.

Lord Greaves: I am grateful to the noble Baroness for spelling that out. I think we are in the real world. We have to look at the Bill in those terms, considering what is going to happen, not some airy-fairy principles about what may occur at some distant future time. It is interesting to hear a Conservative Front Bench spokesperson argue about long-term principles. I thought that was what they always accused us of doing instead of living in the real world. I think we are living in the real world on this matter. We are told that we have to listen to what the Government are proposing. They are clearly considering going ahead with referendums in a limited number of regions. The three regions they are clearly considering in the foreseeable future are the North East, Yorkshire and the North West. For all the peripheral problems here and there, there is no fundamental disagreement that if we have regions in this country, those three exist and have an identity. Pretty well anyone can sit down with a map and draw the rough boundaries.

Baroness Blatch: We all live in the real world. In my part of the real world, this is part of the parliamentary process. We are in no doubt about the Government's intentions. Knowing how open the Minister is with Parliament, I have no doubt that he will remind us that at the end of the day the people will decide whether to have regional government. The Bill is set up for the people to decide.
	We know that if we lie down now—in a parliamentary sense—and simply accept these boundaries as de facto because they are what the Government want, we will be remiss in our duty. This part of the process is to try to persuade the Government that there is a real issue. Whether or not the Government intend to have regional government only in the North East and one or two other areas, whether there is to be a referendum and whether the answer is yes or no in any part of the country, once the boundaries are set and the Bill is passed by Parliament, people will be able to vote only on the boundaries set in the Bill. This is our opportunity to say at the outset that the boundaries should be properly revisited, taking into account all the points made.
	I am also cognisant of what the Liberal Democrats have said. On Second Reading, they made it clear that, irrespective of whether they get changes to achieve the kind of regional government they want, if the Government insist and powers are ceded upward from local government to regional assemblies rather than downward from national government, with all of local government being reorganised, at the end of the day the Liberal Democrats so want regional government that they will still vote for the Bill. We are more principled than that. We will fight for Liberals, Conservatives and Labour Party members outside this Chamber to get the point sorted out by Parliament ahead of action being taken and referendums being held.

Lord Greaves: I am grateful that the noble Baroness will come out fighting for us all. We look forward to seeing that. The question of powers comes up later. We all agree that the Bill is unsatisfactory in that it does not deal with powers. We shall discuss amendments on that subject later.
	There is clearly an important point to be made about boundaries. Other amendments, some of which we have tabled, deal with the issue in a better way.
	The criteria laid out in paragraph (c)(i) and (ii) of the amendment simply do not meet the provisions of the Bill. Paragraph (c)(ii) refers to,
	"the need to reflect the identities and interests of local communities".
	I agree with that proposition, but if there is to be a review of regional areas and regional boundaries, there clearly has to be as part of that review a consideration of whether there is a regional identity, whether there are regional interests and where those regional identities and interests lie. That ought to be a fundamental consideration. It is indicative of the approach taken in the amendment by the Conservatives that they do not even think that that is worth including.
	The suggestion that the criterion of "approximately equal population size" is a fundamental criterion is nonsense. Cornwall is a case in point. If there is to be a review of boundaries, there is clearly a case—whether it is right or wrong—for saying that Cornwall should be a region in its own right. A large number of people would argue that case. Indeed, the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, argued that case from the Conservative Benches at Second Reading. That view clearly clashes with what is set out in the amendment regarding a uniform size. On that ground alone we find it impossible to support the amendment.

Baroness Rendell of Babergh: The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, referred to Cornwall. Cornwall may be a major example of dissent from the proposed regions. Some 10 per cent of its population has signified objection to being part of the South West—an area which would include Swindon and Gloucester. Cornwall has its own language, which is very much on the increase, a unique terrain and a coastline probably distinguished above all others in the United Kingdom. Only a referendum will show, but Cornwall will not easily submit to inclusion in a vast area along with fellow constituents with whom the Cornish consider they have nothing in common.

Lord Pearson of Rannoch: The noble Lord, Lord Stoddart of Swindon, was brave enough and well informed enough to introduce the European dimension into the debate, as some of us did at Second Reading. The noble Lord could not see, of course, that his erstwhile noble friend on the Front Bench, the Minister, treated his intervention with, I was going to say silent mirth but I am afraid it has become the sort of statutory ridicule with which any of us are greeted who try to recognise the influence that the European Union is having on nearly all our affairs. This Bill is no exception.
	At Second Reading I think that I got the Minister to confirm, in a somewhat coy way, that the boundaries proposed—I am sure he will correct me if I am wrong—for the English regions are, indeed, the same boundaries which have been drawn for the European constituencies. That means that they were agreed in Brussels and that they receive so-called European aid, which is not, of course, as the noble Lord—

Lord Bowness: I am grateful to my noble friend for giving way, but perhaps he can help me. I thought that I heard him say that the boundaries of the European constituencies were agreed in Brussels. I thought that there was great argument in this House and elsewhere when we settled the boundaries of the European constituencies.

Lord Pearson of Rannoch: They are the boundaries of the European constituencies and they send Members to the European so-called Parliament. They are, as I understand it—the Minister appeared to confirm this at Second Reading—the boundaries which we are considering today. In fact, the Minister said:
	"At present, I understand that regional government boundaries are in any case coterminous with European Parliament boundaries. As far as I know, there is no cross-over; they were used last time".—[Official Report, 20/2/03; col. 1334.]
	It is a usual European trick to say, "Well, it is there anyway. It was used last time and so there cannot be anything wrong with it".

Baroness Scott of Needham Market: Does the noble Lord agree that the boundaries as they are currently drawn exist only because his party when in government created them for administrative purposes? Has he not observed that other organisations have therefore reorganised their boundaries in order to be coterminous, and that the decision to create regional parliamentary constituencies for the European Parliament was taken as a matter of convenience as they already existed? This Bill follows on from that.

Lord Pearson of Rannoch: I do not know whether the noble Baroness was present, but I thought that we had already covered that point. I do not think that the noble Baroness or anyone on her Benches could accuse me of going along with anything done by my party in the European context. I am grateful for her intervention but I am entirely innocent of the accusation that she seeks to make.
	Before the helpful intervention of my noble friend Lord Bowness I said that the regions already receive European so-called aid. The noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, reminded the Committee briefly—but I shall do it again—that there is no such thing as EU aid. We get back only about £1 from every £2 that we send to the corrupt filter in Brussels. That so-called aid is always spent in this country on projects which are designed to improve the image of the corrupt octopus in Brussels and not necessarily on projects which we would back here.
	As I say, at Second Reading the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, and, indeed, my noble friend Lord Bowness tried to dismiss the genuine fears that many of us have that what we are witnessing in this Bill is in fact the beginning of the great project of the Europe of the regions. In that regard I say to the Minister that he did not answer the main question that I put to him at Second Reading, and this may be as good an opportunity as any to put it to him again. If we Eurosceptics were scaremongering, would he come to the Dispatch Box with his hand on his heart and give an unequivocal assurance on behalf of Her Majesty's Government that the regionalisation envisaged in the Bill will never, and could never—and I mean never—lead to the kind of dominance by Brussels and the European Union which I described in my Second Reading speech and with which I do not need to trouble the Committee again now? I was given no such assurance from the Minister on that matter. It would be helpful to have such an assurance today.
	But there is a positive aspect to the amendment which I should have thought the Minister might be willing to accept. If the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, myself and others are just scaremongering and these regions and the boundaries of these regions have nothing to do with the European project of the Europe of the regions, then surely it would allay our fears and much of the resistance that the proposal is meeting in the country if the Minister were to accept the amendment which might result in boundaries different from those of the European Union constituencies. I do not say that it would kill completely the project of the corrupt octopus in Brussels, but it might go some way towards messing it up. Therefore, for that reason, I support the amendment.

Lord Stoddart of Swindon: I want to take up one of the points that the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, made. He made many good points and reasonable points. But he referred to living in the real world and said that we were all agreed on the fundamentals. I hope that I always live in the real world. I meet many people and talk to many people. Their world seems to be my world. I hope the noble Lord will agree that I, like him, live in the real world. He said that we are all agreed on the fundamentals. But the debate has demonstrated that we are not all agreed on the fundamentals. That is the whole point of the discussion. He seems to think that today and over the next three or four days in Committee we are discussing an issue which has been agreed.
	That is not the idea. The idea of scrutinising the Bill is to seek to improve it. I believe that the amendment does that. The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, may not agree with the contents of the proposed new clause but we should try to understand and improve the Bill. I give an example. He said that provided the people agree, the Government will have referendums in three regional areas. Let us suppose that the people in those regions agree and set up regional authorities. They say, "This is a good idea. We want to set up other regions". However, the other regions may not agree with the boundaries. They may say, "We would agree with the regions if you had not already given what we consider should be part of our region to someone else". The method of setting up regions on the basis of present administrative regions and on the basis that they would be more democratic is absurd and undemocratic. It will not enable regions to be set up which are convenient to the working of ordinary people and of good devolved government.
	We are not all agreed on the fundamentals. Indeed, what the Minister may argue are fundamentals are certainly not fundamentals. If we are to have regional government—I repeat that I am agin it—we should start with a blank sheet and decide exactly what the boundaries of the regions will be.
	Cornwall has been mentioned. I have to say that Cornwall would be far better served by good devolved local government than by being part of a regional government. What Cornwall wants is not just a new country called Cornwall— that would be absurd—but the ability to do what is right for Cornwall. It must have far more powers and the wherewithal to do so. That is what Cornwall really wants. Some people down there may not know it. I want local government properly resourced, near to the communities which are served and able to co-operate with local government to provide greater services.
	I hope that I do live in this world. But we are not agreed upon the fundamentals and unless the Minister is prepared to move sharply on the issue and start on a blank piece of paper so far as concerns the geographical areas, the whole matter will be a complete and utter failure in the long term.

Lord Rooker: At the risk of embarrassing the noble Lord, I thought that the most telling intervention came from the noble Lord, Lord Waddington, when he told the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, that because I had said something, it was going to happen and, therefore, it had to be accepted. I hope that that will be the flavour of the remainder of the debate.
	I give a pledge to the Committee that I shall do my best to answer only the amendments tabled. I shall be ruthless with myself. I apologise for my earlier intervention when the noble Baroness was introducing the amendment. However, I thought it right to put the matter in context. These boundaries have not appeared since 1997. It is true that they have been used since 1997 for other purposes: for the European elections; and the regional development agencies. The word "incoherent" was used in relation to the boundaries. Therefore, I thought it right and not party politically churlish to remind the noble Baroness that those are boundaries set up by a Conservative government. We have not sought to interfere with them. They have been used and added to for many other functions. As the noble Baroness said in an intervention, other organisations changed their internal arrangements to fit in with them because it was administratively convenient.
	I wish to make this clear. It cannot be "big" local government because the powers scrutinised by the assemblies will be from central government. Power is not going up; it is all going down. I treat the proposed new clause seriously. I do not think that I shall be minded to accept it; I shall give reasons why. However, I have to assume that those who are fundamentally opposed to regional government will still vote against the proposal. I am not sure of the purpose of the new clause. If you are against regional government you can propose processes for setting up or delaying the boundaries but I assume, therefore, that at the end of the day the Conservative Party will vote against the proposal.

Baroness Hanham: On that point alone, it does not matter whether or not the Conservative Party is in favour of regional government. In this Chamber we are considering government proposals on a policy they have developed and are about to put to the electorate. Whether or not the Conservative Party believes in regional government, it seems perfectly proper to accept government policy at face value but to ensure that it is at least as coherent as possible.

Lord Bowness: In view of the Minister's remarks about powers, when we debate the next amendment perhaps he will particularise the powers proposed to be devolved from central government to the regional assemblies. At Second Reading, the noble Lord gave the example of housing. It sounded suspiciously like breaking up the Housing Corporation or, if not, taking the existing housing functions from existing local government. Perhaps those points will be answered in the next group of amendments.

Lord Rooker: As I probably stated at Second Reading, the answers are set out in the sustainable communities plan. There is no secret about the proposal on housing.

Lord Bowness: With respect—I do not wish to interrupt the noble Lord too much—the functions quoted as going to regional assemblies are those at present carried out by local authorities of one kind or another. They are not central government functions.

Lord Rooker: The noble Lord has a fundamental misunderstanding. Between today and the following days in Committee, I invite him to read the Government's policy statement in a White Paper—there is no secret—published in May 2002. It is available in the Printed Paper Office. It sets out exactly government policy, clearly thought through. It puts forward a proposal. The Bill is based on it. It is a paving Bill because it sets up only the preparations for the regional assemblies.
	We believe that the consultation proposed by the new clause would be unproductive, expensive and time consuming. It is likely that no more agreement would emerge from that process than there is on current regional boundaries, for the reasons that we have heard today. There will always be arguments on the margin; people will argue about how many regions there should be in the country, whether the London boundaries should remain the same, and so on.
	The current boundaries are well established, whatever disputes there may be about the margin and numbers and whatever arguments there might be about one part of a county looking north or another part looking south. The boundaries have had a good deal of acceptance and recognition over several years, and they are used by many organisations, as well as by the Government.

Baroness Blatch: Does the Minister accept the distinction between what is proposed and the administrative boundaries as they are at the moment, with good county government and good spread, and local district and parish government below them? The distinction is real and it is what we are here to discuss. If regional assemblies are introduced, local government will be vastly changed and vastly removed from local people. Therefore, administrative areas without county councils and with vastly amalgamated district councils are a very different proposition indeed.

Lord Rooker: That is another point that we will debate later on. We are not prepared to introduce new tiers of government. I made that clear on Second Reading. We are not having any new tiers of government.

Noble Lords: Oh!

Lord Rooker: No, hang on a minute. The implication of the intervention from the noble Baroness, Lady Blatch, is that we would have regional assemblies provided that we leave everything else as it is. That would imply another tier of government, as the merchants and the media have said. I have read in the past few days, in the forgers' gazette parading as the Daily Mail, that we are introducing another tier of government. We are not. If we had to introduce another tier of government we would not introduce this Bill, and if it was amended in such a way we would not proceed with it.
	We are not prepared to introduce another tier of government. That is why, if regional assemblies are to be introduced after a referendum, we need first to consider what will be needed to create unitary authorities, so that there is only one tier of government in addition to regional assemblies. Before people voted in a referendum for a regional assembly, they would know all the details of that process; they would know where the boundaries were, what the unitary authorities were, and what changes were proposed to the functions of local government.

Baroness Blatch: Will the Minister accept that he has completely misinterpreted my concern? He says that we have consistent administrative areas, that they have worked so far and there is no reason why they should not work in future. However, they worked because they worked alongside good county and local government. The proposition set out in the White Paper is that they would be working alongside nothing because the counties and/or the districts will have disappeared. I was not suggesting the introduction of another layer of government; I was simply saying that the proposition is a very different one indeed.

Lord Rooker: The noble Baroness cannot say that until the Boundary Committee has proposed what is necessary to create unitary authorities in advance of a referendum. That cannot take place until the committee gets the wherewithal from this legislation. Therefore, it is not possible to make that allegation.

Lord Waddington: The Minister is becoming very confused, which is unusual for him. Surely, it follows as night follows day that in those parts of the country where there is only unitary government, if one creates a regional government one is creating another tier of government.

Lord Rooker: Yes, in those parts of the country, but there is not a single region that is exclusively unitary, so there would be changes. They will be dealt with in other amendments.
	I want to give the mechanics and practicalities of the new clause. We are only the Government—we may get it wrong. Nevertheless, the information that I have may be useful to our deliberations.
	If the new clause was accepted, we estimate that it would take about 16 or 17 months to conduct a review of the regional boundaries, provided that all England was done at once. The resources of the Electoral Commission are such that it could not conceivably conduct an all-England review, given the workload that would involve. It would have to be broken down into tranches—probably into two or three regions, so that the country was done in three tranches—which the new clause does not permit. The reality is that under the new clause it would take about four years to review the regional boundaries.
	I know that what I am about to say will be prayed in aid against me later, but it is in the White Paper. In exceptional circumstances, on some unspoken date in future, we have not ruled out changes to the boundaries. That does not mean that we or anyone else have plans for them. It would happen only in exceptional circumstances and in the longer term, as we made clear in the White Paper. Therefore, imposing a boundary review in the amendment would not be conducive to our plans to proceed expeditiously to give the regions of this country the opportunity to have elected regional assemblies. The point at issue is: how soon can we let the people decide whether they want elected regional assemblies? If we proceed as the Bill intends and the soundings work out, one, two or more regions may have a referendum before the next general election. They should not have to wait for four years for a review of the boundaries, which the new clause would make necessary.

The Earl of Caithness: Will the Minister give way?

Lord Rooker: I will not be able to answer any questions about Scotland—I can tell the noble Earl that.

The Earl of Caithness: I was not going to mention Scotland again. However, it has been a useful experience living there, because I have seen happen something similar to what the Government propose.
	Would the amendment be any more acceptable if it were rephrased so that there was a boundary review for only two areas at first? One could do a review of the North East and Yorkshire first, if the Government particularly wanted to begin in that area. The rest of the country could learn from that, and it would make it easier to know in advance what would happen when it came to a referendum.

Lord Rooker: That would not make sense, given the fact that we have been taking soundings from citizens and organisations within the existing boundaries on which the Bill is based and on which we want to proceed. When the Bill gets Royal Assent, if Parliament so desires, the Secretary of State will make a statement about the results of the soundings. After that, the Electoral Commission can be given the starting gun to start work. Therefore, the noble Earl's suggestion would not work—it would still cause delays.
	It would be using extreme language to suggest that the new clause would wreck the Bill, but it would delay the provisions by four years.
	The key aim of regional assemblies is to bring under democratic control the work of existing regional bodies. I do not have to set them all out, because they are in the White Paper, a summary of which was produced in the Printed Paper Office. In the North East alone, there are 30 organisations comprising central government departments and agencies with regional or local offices. In that region, there are 21 national public bodies with regional or local offices. There are two other regional public bodies and five sub-regional or local organisations located in the region.

Lord Greaves: Will the Minister give way?

Lord Rooker: No, I want to finish this point.
	The key aim is to bring under democratic control the work of the existing regional bodies that deliver or administer services. A significant number of those bodies operate on the boundaries that are the subject of the amendment. We think that they are a reasonable size in terms of the population. It would be impossible to make the regions identical in terms of landmass, economic performance, the GDP or population. Those details are set out in the White Paper.
	If we redrew the boundaries before we started, there would be massive upheaval in all those organisations. It may be that the soundings do not work, and there may be no vote for regional assemblies. In that case, what would have been the point of reviewing the regional boundaries over the course of four years, when they work okay at the moment, for present purposes?

Lord Hanningfield: Essex and Hertfordshire dislike intensely being included in the eastern region—and it does not work. The Minister will be as enthusiastic as I am about the Thames Gateway. It is ridiculous that the decision on the Thames Gateway, which relates to Essex and Kent, is taken in the Eastern region. There would be a considerable advantage in reviewing the boundaries in the South East now; it would help to make them work. The existing boundaries are not working in a good chunk of the country. Even if there were no regional assemblies, a review would benefit the way in which boundaries work in the South East and the Thames Gateway.

Lord Rooker: I agree with the noble Lord on the importance of the Thames Gateway. However, it is currently split between three regions—the South East, East and London. Based on all the evidence I have from my short time at the ODPM, co-operation and partnership between the people and the key players are working immensely well. Nothing is perfect, but that is no excuse to stop the entire process and start again. As I said repeatedly on Second Reading, the assemblies are strategic. Eight regions outside London are established and recognised and a range of organisations are already in place, each of which is a sufficient size to enable it to perform its role. London's boundaries are established and no one is arguing that they should be changed—although that is the implication of a review. The new clause seeks to tear all that up—and for what? It offers pointless delay. Nothing would happen for four years. It would be four years before people would have a choice of whether to go down this route. It would be a complete waste of time. I hope that the noble Baroness will not press this amendment.

Lord Greaves: The Minister referred to the large number of organisations in the North East which already exist on these regional boundaries and he used the specific words, "bringing them under democratic control". Did he actually mean that, or was he still talking about some sort of airy-fairy monitoring and scrutinising and about not controlling them in any way whatever? Will not those organisations still exist? Where they are responsible to central Government, will not that responsibility continue?

Lord Rooker: Regardless of the degree of scrutiny, it is democratic control. As we said, they will be very small bodies and there will be another piece of legislation. However, the position will be fully set out before the referendum so that, before they vote and decide whether to go down that route, people understand the powers, consequences and procedures for how such regional assemblies work. That is the people's choice, not the Government's choice or the politicians' choice, based on all the evidence we can muster and make available on the consequences of a "Yes" vote in a referendum.

Baroness Hamwee: I invite the Minister to address a specific point. He talked about delay—which, as I made clear in my speech, very much concerns me. I described it, perhaps more harshly, as "mischief", and he avoided saying that this was a wrecking clause. However, I think that it would help the Committee—this is an entirely straight and innocent question—if he said how the amendment, if agreed to, would relate to the Government's manifesto commitment, as I understand it, to introduce regional government in this Parliament. I do not have the manifesto with me, so I do not know the precise words. However, given the role of this House, the question seems relevant.

Lord Rooker: I do not know the date of the next general election, but I think that it will be in less than four years. So I can safely say that, if this lot took four years, it would be beyond this Parliament.

Baroness Blatch: The Government are making it possible to introduce regional government. However, as the noble Lord makes clear every time he comes to the Dispatch Box, it will be the people who introduce it, not the Government. This is a paving Bill. The Government will have met their parliamentary and manifesto obligation simply by putting the Bill before Parliament and gaining approval for it. Parliament will decide the means to the end. So it will not be the Government who introduce regional government.

Baroness Hanham: I think that this amendment has generated a worthwhile debate on the overall principles of regional government. As I said, it does not really matter whether the Conservatives agree with regional government. As Members of the Committee have seen, there are some divisions on the Benches about the principle and form of regional government. What does matter is that the Bill is coherent. To be fair, we have not yet had a Bill on regional assemblies. This is simply a paving Bill for how and where assemblies are established. Our argument is still that one cannot proceed with elected regional assemblies when there is incoherence on the point of democratic input.
	This aspect of the debate has been quite entertaining because no one has any idea where these boundaries originated. In the House of Commons debate, regionalism was traced back not quite to Alfred and his cakes, but quite some way. It was decided that its basis lies probably in the 1948 work and pensions areas. Members of the Committee can therefore choose their own starting point, but these regions have served an administrative purpose. However, we believe that there is a difference between administrative and democratic regions. We are trying to establish that difference.
	The amendment also puts forward the argument for ensuring formal and proper consultation with the great number of bodies and great number of people on the regional boundaries. The debate has given a small indication of the great concern and interest in the quixotic nature of the current boundaries. If one is proposing any layer of government—regardless of whether it is an additional or changed layer—and democratic input, those who elect the individuals forming that assembly should have at least some idea of the relevance of the area concerned. Cornwall and Cumbria have been cited as major areas of concern. They are not just on the periphery of boundaries. They are a great test indeed for my proposal on boundary review.
	I think that the Government may hold a misconception about the extent to which the country understands their intentions. The position will not have been helped by the fact that the soundings exercise by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister to test interest levels ended before the Bill reached this House. That exercise finished on 3rd March. As noble Lords who followed proceedings in another place will know, the report of those proceedings could be written on the head of a pin. There was very little interest and very little information. I think that the Government will find it difficult to say that there has been meaningful consultation. This amendment provides for a proper consultation process.

Lord Stoddart of Swindon: The noble Baroness is presumably winding up. Before she does, I should like to ask whether she has read the article in The Times, a week ago last Monday, by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. He said:
	"With our plans to increase UK funding for regional policy, devolve decision-making power to the regions and return key regional policy responsibilities from the EU back to Britain, the future control of regional economic policy is moving from Brussels to London and then from Westminster to the . . . regions themselves".
	Does the noble Baroness agree that that appears to show a fundamental change in government policy—that they are not satisfied with how regional policy is being controlled by Brussels, and that they therefore want it returned to this country? That being so, might not the Government want to consider whether the existing administrative regions are more suitable for this new devolvement from the EU than are the existing regional development bodies, which were of course set up to suit the European connection? Does it not suit and help the noble Baroness's argument that the Chancellor of the Exchequer is thinking along different lines and may very well want to alter the regions to suit a policy which is dictated and followed by the United Kingdom rather than Brussels?

Baroness Hanham: I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart of Swindon, for drawing my attention to the article, which I have not seen. I can well understand why the Chancellor might wish to repatriate some of the decisions made on our behalf in Brussels. It may very well be that he would like to have some of those decisions taken by us, but on a regional basis. If that is correct, and he wishes to review the boundaries, that would fit in nicely with my amendment.
	I am a little burdened by the arguments put forward by the Liberal Democrats. I do not believe that they reflect what is being said in the country in general. There is great concern across the board.

Lord Waddington: I am grateful to my noble friend for giving way. Is it not right that she should pay tribute to the Minister who really made the point for her on 20th February? He said:
	"My Lords, the Liberal Democrats are not a national party like others. They are different in some parts of the country to others".—[Official Report, 20/2/03; col. 1332.]

Baroness Hanham: I am grateful to my noble friend for that intervention. I believe that the Liberal Democrats may not be speaking as they did in another place and as has been said in the country. I hope that we shall have an opportunity to test that further. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
	Clause 1 [Referendums]:

Baroness Hanham: moved Amendment No. 2:
	Page 1, line 5, at beginning insert "Subject to subsection (1A),"

Baroness Hanham: We have already opened up a number of areas of the Bill, but I am not certain how we can debate its merits. The Bill asks people to vote for regional assemblies when we, and those who vote, are not being told the powers, responsibilities and constitutional arrangements of the assemblies. This issue was rightly emphasised by many noble Lords at Second Reading. I do not believe that at that stage the Minister gave anything like an adequate response although he admitted that the regional assemblies would not be service delivery organisations.
	It seems more than likely that they will be just talking shops. But no one should be asked to vote for a pig in a poke. Even if only one or two regions are involved in the reorganisation in the early stages—the way things are going there may be none at all—that represents an enormous constitutional upheaval. But the only information available about the practical powers of the regional assemblies is that they will resemble in some shape or form the proposals contained in the White Paper.
	But if the White Paper is to be believed, these functions or powers will consist principally of a right to consult or be consulted on some strategic plans or the exercise of some control over organisations and bodies whose functions already exist regionally. Perhaps I may take up a point made in the previous debate. I wonder how many of the organisations listed on page 81 of the White Paper will come under regional government and how many will stand as free organisations. I refer the Committee specifically to the learning and skills councils, which I understand will not be part of the responsibilities of regional assemblies. The Minister might wish to comment on that.
	To highlight the general ignorance about what regional assemblies will do, I wish to comment on the comparisons with Scottish and Welsh devolution which have been bandied about. It is absolutely clear that what is proposed for the regional assemblies is very different as regards Scotland and Wales and there will be no devolution of power. To date, this House and another place, which has unavailingly discussed this issue, are in the dark as to the actual nature of the powers, structures and constitutional arrangements of elected regional assemblies.
	We are not alone: it seems that the Government themselves are no clearer. We understand that regional government officers will continue as before. In the debate on 20th February, the Minister admitted that as a result of this upheaval it was not likely that there would be fewer quangos. As my noble friend Lady Blatch has already pointed out, he could think of only one significant devolved power from central government and that was housing. In reply to a question from my noble friend, the Minister said (at col. 1331 of the Official Report):
	"We are regionalising housing".
	If my noble friend Lady Blatch asked me to give another example, I would have a great job in finding one. But there is one: it is the decimation of the structural planning roles of the county councils, which are being passed to the regional planning boards which would continue to exist.
	A crucial point is that an elected regional assembly would not improve the future delivery and quality of vital services such as education, social services, transport and health. But what they will do needs to be spelled out and agreed by Parliament. If we in this House and another place are confused about what functions the regional assemblies will have, how much more will that apply to the general public?
	Perhaps it is in the Government's interest to keep the public so confused since if they hear that regional assemblies will take decisions from Whitehall and will have a larger degree of devolution, the public may be inclined to vote in favour. If they did, as things stand, they would have been gulled into a view that there was more to these changes than there is. Indeed, there is plenty of evidence to show that in the absence of proper, detailed proposals, wholly erroneous information is being spun already by campaigning organisations, which are long on enthusiasm but short on reality. What the public is not being told is that of the 10 powers listed in the White Paper, eight would be ceded by county councils, as my noble friend Lady Blatch told us at Second Reading.
	The reality is that far from bringing decisions closer to the people—another spun fabrication—those in housing and planning in particular are being taken further away from the people affected. When they fully understand the implications of regional assemblies in terms of costs, the re-organisation of local government and representation, they may be less than enchanted by the whole idea.
	I cannot stress enough that the functions of regional assemblies must be spelled out clearly and definitely before a referendum is held. It will be thoroughly misleading, if not completely dishonest, not to do so. Our view is that the Government should draft a regional assemblies Bill; that it should be debated in Parliament and passed before any decision is taken on how, when and where any referendum should be held. It is the democratic responsibility of this Government to lay their cards on the table as to the powers of regional assemblies. If there is the required level of interest they should not be afraid to do so. I beg to move.

Baroness Hamwee: Amendment No. 5 takes a slightly different approach and picks up on comments by the Minister and his colleagues about their minds not being wholly closed to pre-legislative scrutiny of the draft Bill before a referendum is held. That process attracts me—not least because, depending on how the Committee goes about its business, it would enable direct discussion with witnesses, stakeholders and others with a stake, however one defines that, in the outcome. That seems a constructive way of dealing with proposed legislation and, because of our concerns about the powers spelt out in the White Paper and some of the terminology used now, it needs to be explored further.
	In the debate on Amendment No. 2, the Minister—referring to the powers scrutinised by the new assemblies—talked about scrutiny as being democratic control. Scrutiny does not amount to the exercise of a power. Whether or not it amounts to democratic control depends on how scrutiny is applied—at its most extreme, scrutiny can veto the exercise of a function proposed by the executive body. It is not just the headline issue of powers and functions but how the executive and scrutiny arms will operate in the assembles for which they are proposed.
	The issue extends to structure. We tend to concentrate on function. This House is not the best example of the maxim that form should follow function but to my mind it should. If the function were as we wish it to be, the proposed form may not be appropriate.
	The new assemblies are supposed to be mean and lean, comprising between 25 and 35 members. There are issues around how much a small body can be representative of a substantial region. We have concerns over whether so small a body can provide the executive and scrutiny arms. It is not just a matter of the workload. There is a danger that the number of members suggested to undertake those two functions is too low.
	The amendment asks the Minister to build on comments made by him and his colleagues about being open to some way of continuing this debate. It is clear that Parliament would like to be involved in the debate about the assemblies' powers, functions and structure. Amendments Nos. 5 and 6 are a way of taking that forward.

Lord Bowness: If anyone is to be convinced that the Bill is an exercise in devolution, not local government reorganisation, it is vital that powers are spelt out clearly—certainly before any referendum is held.
	The Minister chided me earlier, suggesting that I had not read the White Paper. While it is true that I do not have my copy, that has been remedied by the Printed Paper Office. Its contents are just as I remember from my original reading of them. The White Paper makes it clear that the powers of an elected assembly are at best marginal. It is important to take account of the summary:
	"Elected assemblies will improve the quality of life for people in their regions, particularly by improving regional economic performance . . . Assemblies will be given the lead role in developing strategies to achieve this. They will drive the implementation of their strategies, monitor progress and revise strategies when appropriate . . . Assemblies will be given a range of powers to help them to deliver these strategies. These will include executive functions such as responsibility for resources and influence to promote results that will benefit the region . . . Specific responsibilities include economic development and regeneration, spatial development, housing, transport, skills and culture . . . Regional Development Agencies will be accountable to their elected assembly, which will appoint the Chair and Board members".
	That last responsibility is the only one that is not an existing local government county function and is true devolution from the Secretary of State to the proposed regional assemblies. Otherwise, they are to be consulted.
	The Minister earlier listed the number of public bodies active in the North East as some justification for establishing regional organisations. The list of central government departments and agencies with regional and local offices, presumably prayed in aid of the argument, includes the Court Service, Crown Prosecution Service, Forestry Commission, Highways Agency—which we know is not going over because that was said on Second Reading, HM Land Registry, Inland Revenue and Passport Agency. There is no suggestion that any of them will be involved or be subject to regional assemblies. They have regional offices in the same way that any organisation might have branch offices.

Lord Rooker: I did not say that they were going over. I gave that as an example of other organisations that have used the boundaries for their purposes. I did not say that they were going over to the elected regional assemblies.

Lord Bowness: I do not want to put words into the Minister's mouth, but I doubt that the Passport Agency is using a regional boundary. If there is a convenient location for a Passport Agency office in the North East, it has nothing to do with regional boundaries.
	The organisations that will be subject to democratic control from regional assemblies include the Countryside Agency, Environment Agency and English Nature. The White Paper, from which we are supposed to draw comfort and be informed, makes clear the formidable role that a regional assembly will have in connection with the environment. It will have the right to be consulted by the Countryside Agency, Environment Agency, English Nature and other relevant public bodies—and to consult them in turn. That is not devolution in my terms.
	If those examples purport to justify establishing regional assemblies, then although we are told that there will be no additional tier of government, the truth is that there will be no additional tier of local government. The Government in their wisdom will reorganise local government, make it much larger than it is currently and transfer functions from existing local government bodies to the new assemblies. The new assemblies will not be a devolution of government from the centre. If they are going to be statutory local authorities, they will be subject to the same controls as existing local authorities. I draw Committee Members' attention to the definition of local authorities in Clause 23 of the Local Government Bill which appeared recently in the Printed Paper Office. It includes all the existing local authorities with which your Lordships will be familiar. Clause 23(1)(o) also includes:
	"any other body specified for the purposes of this subsection by regulations under subsection (2)".
	Under subsection (2) those are levying and precepting bodies. The White Paper says that regional assemblies will raise their finances independently and not by a levy on central government. They will therefore be local authorities and not devolved assemblies. If the Government wish to prove me wrong, they will publish the powers before the referendum.

Lord Waddington: It is only through such debates that we begin to get the picture and some idea of what job, if any, the elected members of the regional assemblies will have. On 5th March the Minister said that there were no new powers or funds. He was underlining what he has said again today: there will be no new powers devolved from central government to the elected assemblies. He has said today that no new powers will be taken from local government and given to the elected assemblies. That is not strictly true, because we know that it has already been decided that planning powers should go to a regional level.
	Apart from that matter, the Minister says that no powers will be taken from local government and given to the regional assemblies. What on earth will they have to do? The assembly members will be paid and people are entitled to know what salaries they will receive and what the chief executives will be paid. The bill for the assemblies will be footed not by central government but by council taxpayers, who are already being punished by the Government. They will be paying their taxes for nothing, if the Minister's words are to be taken literally, because there will be no new powers for the assemblies to exercise.
	We will be debating the referendum question on Clause 2. The wording of Clause 2 on the statement that must precede the question on the ballot paper makes this proposal sound far more attractive than the facts warrant. I know that the Electoral Commission has approved the wording, but it has nothing to rely on except the extremely vague wording on page 34 of the White Paper to which my noble friend Lord Bowness referred. It is wrong that anyone should be asked to vote in a referendum for a regional assembly without the powers or lack of powers that it is to exercise being spelt out at least in a draft Bill if not in legislation.

Lord Stoddart of Swindon: This is a cart-before-the-horse Bill. How on earth can we ask people to vote for something if they do not know what they are voting for? That is what the debate is about. When people are voting for something, especially a major change, they should know exactly what they are voting for. The Minister may believe that only opponents of regions are concerned about the matter, but the Campaign for the English Regions is also concerned. It sent me a large brief, but it is only necessary to quote one paragraph. It states:
	"In the meantime people in the regions are understandably concerned about voting for an assembly whose powers have not yet been established. If the Government will not legislate before a referendum then it should move this timetable forward by committing itself to publish a draft powers and constitution Bill well in advance of any referendum. This will enable debate about how assemblies will work to continue and develop in the regions".
	If the people in favour of the regions are concerned about the Government's policy, surely the Minister should consider what they are saying and ensure that before people vote they know what they are voting for and are not being asked to buy a pig in a poke.

The Earl of Caithness: I support the amendment. As I said on the first amendment, the two crucial issues are the size and functions of the region. It is crucial that those who are to take part in the referendum know exactly what they are voting for and the implications. Now that the full implications have been realised north of the border, many of the people who voted would not now vote in the same way. All sorts of functions such as planning and culture have been lost at a local level and have gone to a regional level.
	That has been a disaster for all sorts of small community-based interests, which have been doing a great deal of good work for a long time but now find that their finances have changed and that they are not able to continue. Where planning is carried out on a regional rather than local basis it is a recipe for disaster because locals do not feel involved in controversial decisions. To give an example, windmills for generating electricity have caused endless problems because decisions are not being taken at the local level as they should be.

Lord Pearson of Rannoch: I also support these amendments to define the powers and functions of the proposed assemblies. I know that the Minister wishes to avoid all discussion of the Bill's European dimension. I noticed, for instance, that he did not take the opportunity I offered him to answer my basic question at the end of my remarks on Second Reading. I can of course persist.
	To be more specific and to give the Minister a much easier question to answer on the European dimension with reference to the amendments, what will be the interface between the new regional assemblies and Brussels? I presume that Brussels will continue to send back some of our taxpayers' money in the guise of EU regional aid. What role do the Government see for the new regional assemblies in that process? Do the Government ever foresee them having powers to raise taxes, for instance? Would those taxes be confined to the regions, or can the Government foresee part of them being passed to the tentacles from Brussels?

Lord Rooker: I say at the outset, and at the risk of repeating myself again—

Baroness Blatch: Is the Minister going to respond to my noble friend?

Lord Rooker: I am summing up.

Baroness Blatch: I wish to speak to the amendment.

Lord Rooker: Well, I am sorry!

Baroness Blatch: I did not want to stop the Minister if he was only intervening as regards my noble friend.

Lord Rooker: No one else was on their feet.

Baroness Blatch: I am sorry. I am only a little one. The Minister should bear in mind that we cannot see each other.
	First, I strongly support my noble friend. With a proper determination of boundaries before—

Lord Stoddart of Swindon: I am sorry to interrupt the noble Baroness but it is important to remember that we are in Committee and that it does not matter whether the Minister speaks or not. If anyone wants to continue the debate after the Minister has spoken, he or she can do so and that will be quite in order.

Baroness Blatch: The noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, is absolutely right. I did not want the Minister to think that he was bringing the amendment to a close and then stand up and discuss it. This also gives the Minister an opportunity to respond to everyone who has spoken.
	As I just said, I strongly support my noble friend. The first two groups of amendments are absolutely fundamental. The noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, used the phrase, "The cart before the horse". That is definitely the case with the Bill.
	I hope that the noble Lord will forgive us—it is the stuff of politics in both Chambers to use such an opportunity to test all of the arguments and propositions, whichever government are in power.
	Whenever I have listened to government Ministers advocating the development of regional assemblies, they have used the language of bringing democracy to all bodies that operate in the regions. I strongly support the comments of my noble friend Lord Bowness.
	I have examined the list relating to the North East. The noble Lord was absolutely right; it merely reflects what is happening in the area. It would be helpful if the Minister told us what on that list will be ceded—that is, in terms of a link with, partnership with, influence over or shared influence together with—and what powers will pass from the National Health Service, the Inland Revenue, the Passport Agency and learning and skills councils. There are two important lists. I suspect that if a regional assembly is established in the North East, many of those bodies will still operate there—some of them will do so autonomously—and some will have links with the regional assembly.
	As I read the White Paper, even regional development agencies will remain in being under the regional assemblies arrangement. When Ministers discuss this matter, they refer to all such bodies in the region being brought under some form of democratic control. We probably have a meeting of minds with our Liberal colleagues in this regard. There is a real hungriness—or, to be absolutely grammatically correct, hunger—on the part of most of us to know precisely what the Government have in mind in terms of real powers being ceded and from what source.
	My second point involves the difficulty of making sense of the language. The summary to chapter 4 states:
	"Assemblies will be given a range of powers to help them to deliver these strategies. These will include executive functions such as responsibility for resources".
	If assemblies will be given money from central government—we know of the tendency of government to tag any moneys that come down from on high—of course they will have responsibility for such resources. With regard to any moneys that they have, they will be held accountable by district auditors, external auditing and public accountability. The summary continues that assemblies will also be given,
	"influence to promote results that will benefit the region".
	What exactly does that mean? It is important that the Minister gives those words real meaning when he replies.
	An example in chapter 4 is set out in Box 4.1, which is entitled, "Regional strategies for an elected assembly". When one runs through that, one finds it hard to discern a power that will be given to the regions. They will have influence and partnerships with other bodies. With transport, for example, there will be powers to "spell out plans". However, the plans will be controlled by national government. They will not have the power to determine: to address congestion, to improve public transport or road links and to ensure that transport systems support sustainable economic growth. They will merely have the power to set out plans.
	On housing, Box 4.1 states that the assemblies will have powers to,
	"deal with all aspects of the housing market and social housing in the region".
	They will have the power to "deal with" but not to determine. When I asked about the housing that will surround Stansted, I received a letter. The Government will determine that development; there will be no power to determine in a region or at county level. They will have a role in planning and an influence in the local determination once the number of houses has been determined at national level.
	On health improvement, Box 4.1 refers to assemblies,
	"setting out a long-term public health strategy, which assemblies will agree with the relevant Regional Directors of Public Health".
	How does that dovetail with the 10-year plan of the NHS? The NHS determined the NHS Plan and it has been presented to Parliament. What powers will they have to determine something that is separate, or will they simply have to operate within the plans set out by the NHS?
	There are real areas of concern. As noble Lords will know, my particular area is education. The learning and skills councils are regional bodies: there are 47 of them around the country plus a national body. They will continue to operate as learning and skills councils. Will the regional assemblies take on themselves the powers that are currently controlled by the learning and skills councils?
	I am extremely concerned about my final point. What will be the consequence in practical terms for the two parliamentary Chambers: the House of Commons and the House of Lords? We already know that when there was devolution to Scotland, we were told on almost a daily basis that we could not ask questions about Scotland because that was a matter for the Scottish Assembly. We are told on Welsh matters that we cannot ask questions about Wales because that is a matter for the Welsh Assembly. We are now told on London matters that we cannot ask questions on London because that is a matter for the Mayor of London.
	If the North East gets its assembly, will we find ourselves, as Members in this House, with no influence, knowing that the regional assembly has no real power and that its accountability will be to national government? However, we, as Members of this House or another place, will lose our influence as a United Kingdom Parliament.
	I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, and my noble friend Lord Pearson of Rannoch that if the Bill comes to fruition and we have eight regional assemblies plus London, the United Kingdom Parliament will be very seriously emasculated constitutionally. The weight of the United Kingdom as an entity, whether with regard to Europe or anywhere else in the world, will be seriously diminished by this approach.
	The Minister must forgive us for labouring these points and for sounding so anxious about the answers to some of our questions. However, it is incumbent on him to agree with my noble friend that before people are asked to vote in a referendum, they know what they are voting for, what the powers and functions will be and what the entailed costs will be. All of that information must be put before the electorate and agreed by Parliament so that the electorate can make an informed choice.

Lord Evans of Temple Guiting: I beg to move that the House do now resume.

Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to.
	House resumed.

Lord Evans of Temple Guiting: My Lords, I beg to move that the House do now adjourn during pleasure.

Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to.
	[The Sitting was suspended from 1.29 to 2 p.m. for Judicial Business and to 3 p.m. for Public Business.]

Saville Inquiry

Lord Lamont of Lerwick: asked Her Majesty's Government:
	What is the cost to date of the Bloody Sunday inquiry.

Lord Williams of Mostyn: My Lords, the total cost of the inquiry to Government was £104.5 million up to the end of February 2003.

Lord Lamont of Lerwick: My Lords, I make no apology for raising this Question for the third time as every time I raise it the costs have increased. Does the Leader of the House agree that the inquiry should be renamed the "Lawyers' Benevolent Fund" and that the hearings should be moved to the Millennium Dome? How can he justify the fact that one barrister is reported to have been paid over £2 million, others over £400,000 each and those at the end of the gravy train struggle with expenses of just under £1,000 a day? Is it not monstrous that while the Government pay vast sums for the inquiry, the relatives of the victims of the Omagh bombing struggle to find the money to pay their legal fees and are receiving precious little help from the Government?

Lord Williams of Mostyn: My Lords, I first answered this Question on 19th November 2002, secondly on 7th January 2003 and thirdly today. If people keep asking about whether the costs have increased when the legal process is continuing the answer is likely to be in the affirmative. The question is whether allegations of this kind should be investigated. When the Prime Minister announced the inquiry, Mr Hague gave general support. Perhaps the theme underlying the Question of the noble Lord is that we should stop the inquiry now.

Lord Glentoran: My Lords, with hindsight—governments are supposed to have foresight as well—does the Minister agree that Nelson Mandela's truth and reconciliation approach would have been a much more economical and sensible approach? Does he agree that already the Truth and Reconciliation Commission has achieved far more than this nonsensical Saville inquiry, which I suspect will achieve nothing? When it was set up I said that it would achieve nothing but bitterness and it has created more and more bitterness. Does he agree that Nelson Mandela's Truth and Reconciliation Commission has achieved exactly the reverse?

Lord Williams of Mostyn: My Lords, in South Africa the Truth and Reconciliation Commission has been an extraordinary achievement of the human spirit and the generosity of the human heart. Your Lordships will remember that to gain the benefits of the commission one has to admit one's liability. Is it suggested that any of those against whom the grave charges have been brought in the Bloody Sunday inquiry would be willing to do that?

Lord Smith of Clifton: My Lords, do the Government have any views on the remark made by the chief constable that he can see no profit coming from the Saville inquiry one way or the other?

Lord Williams of Mostyn: My Lords, I am happy to repeat that the chief constable has made it plain that he was misrepresented and misreported. He had the decency, which I respectfully commend, to talk to the relatives of those who were killed to say that he very much regretted the hurt that had been caused by the fact that he had been misreported in the newspaper.

Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, perhaps I did not hear the noble and learned Leader of the House correctly, but I did not hear him answer the Question about the cost to date of the Bloody Sunday inquiry. Perhaps he could remind me of the cost. Can he also tell the House when the inquiry is likely to complete its work?

Lord Williams of Mostyn: My Lords, in answer to the noble Lord, Lord Lamont, I gave the figure of £104.5 million, which is divided into £81.5 million in respect of the families' representation generally and £23 million for the MoD representation generally. As I have said on two previous occasions in answering the same Question—I am sorry that my answer has to be the same—it is expected that the report will be concluded in the year 2004.

Chechnya: Referendum

Lord Judd: asked Her Majesty's Government:
	What discussions they have had with the Russian Government on the implications for the global alliance against terrorism of the referendum planned for 23rd March in the Chechen Republic on a new constitution.

Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean: My Lords, we discussed the planned constitutional referendum in Chechnya within the framework of our dialogue with the Russian Government on human rights. In that context we also discussed terrorism. We have made it clear that we recognise the territorial integrity of the Russian Federation and the right of the Russian Government to defend their citizens from terrorism. We do not believe that the conflict in Chechnya can be resolved by military means alone and therefore have urged the Russian authorities to seek a political solution.

Lord Judd: My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that helpful reply. Does she agree that one of the difficulties about the conflict in Chechnya is that while there are fighters who are close to Al'Qaeda and who have no interest in what any of us would recognise as a political settlement, there are others who, however misguided, have turned to fighting for recognisable political objectives? Such people have to be won back into a political process. By impatiently steaming ahead with a referendum on 23rd March on a proposed constitution that has been forged without a political process, there is a danger of counterproductivity and of people unnecessarily being driven into the arms of the extremists. Does she agree that in the end the battle against terrorism has to be won by hearts and minds and that we must persuade the Russians that that has to become a priority?

Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean: My Lords, I agree that part of the battle against terrorism has to be won by hearts and minds, but I am afraid that there are times when the use of force is also necessary, as we sadly know. This is a volatile and highly explosive situation. The conflict is now in its fourth year. My noble friend is right to refer to the Al'Qaeda links that some of the militant groups appear to have. It is worth remembering that some of the groups have struck at the Moscow-appointed civil administration. The latest attack was in December last year when 80 were killed and 150 were injured. My noble friend is right to imply that sometimes Russian troops use violence and brutality in the spiral of violence that he has identified. Since the theatre siege, the Russians have realised that it is important to try to find a means by which to resolve the conflict other than violence, hence consideration of the new constitution. The constitutional referendum is on 23rd March and I am sure that we all hope for a peaceful outcome.

Lord Hylton: My Lords, the whole House will want to recognise the perseverance of the noble Lord, Lord Judd, on behalf of the Council of Europe in this difficult matter. Do the Government agree that daily murder and repression continue? Is it considered that the constitution is sufficiently well known to the potential electors to have a meaningful answer? Does she also accept that some members of the Russian Duma have argued for a postponement?

Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean: My Lords, I too pay tribute to the work that my noble friend has done on this issue. Of course, the cycle of violence is on both sides. I have attempted to illustrate to your Lordships that there have been some appalling suicide attacks that have injured innocent civilians, and in those circumstances naturally the Russian authorities respond.
	The Russian authorities have said that the referendum will take place on 23rd March. Six months after that there is due to be a presidential election and parliamentary elections three months after that. The process is about establishing a new constitution in Chechnya and a knowledge of that will lie at the heart of the referendum.

Lord Howell of Guildford: My Lords, is not the noble Lord, Lord Judd, right in telling us that this tragedy involves separatism as well as terrorism? If, as the noble Lord advises—and he should certainly know—this referendum is premature, can the Minister at least assure us that when President Putin actively seeks close co-operation with international organisations and his friends, including this country, on how to handle this appalling matter, we will respond very positively?

Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean: My Lords, we respond very positively. The noble Lord is right that it is not just about terrorism; it is about separatism. But I hope that the noble Lord heard my Answer that we have made clear that we recognise the territorial integrity of the Russian Federation. The constitutional reforms do not involve a separate state for Chechnya but a degree of autonomy within Chechnya itself.
	Of course we shall try to give what help we can. I regret that the OSCE Assistance Group to Chechnya has been unable to extend its mandate; however, the OSCE presidency is currently exploring with the Russian Government how the work can be continued. We are hopeful of a positive outcome on that.

Lord Wallace of Saltaire: My Lords, it is clear that the conflict in Chechnya has spilled out over national boundaries. It has contributed to the continuing destabilisation of Georgia. What action are the British Government and their colleagues in the European Union now taking to help to stabilise Georgia and to protect Georgians from cross-border, often Russian-supported, destabilisation?

Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean: My Lords, I cannot give the noble Lord any specific information about Georgia. I shall research that further and write to him. The European Union hopes to agree a balanced consensus statement on the situation in Chechnya at this year's United Nations Commission on Human Rights. So the European Union is taking a forward position on the matter. But I shall write to the noble Lord on the specific issue of Georgia.

Lord Rea: My Lords, does my noble friend not agree that the proposed referendum is likely to be a travesty of democracy in view of the fact that a large proportion of the citizens of Chechnya are refugees outside the country, and members of the Russian armed forces will be allowed to vote in this election? Surely that is hardly the way towards a political solution rather than a military one. Will Her Majesty's Government press the Russians to start a dialogue with the elected President of Chechnya, Aslan Maskhadov, who is no terrorist?

Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean: My Lords, I cannot agree that it is a travesty of democracy. I think that the noble Lord is over-stating his case. But I agree that it is a difficult situation and that there are many imperfections. The United Kingdom Government have consistently stressed that a political solution to the conflict in Chechnya is essential. I believe that we are in a better position than we were when there was resort only to the use of violence. We welcome the plans to establish a new constitution. We have welcomed the plans for elections in Chechnya, so I cannot agree that it is a travesty of democracy. But we hope that the constitutional referendum will be the beginning of a long-term political process in which all parties will be able to renounce violence. Its success will depend on the thorough, consistent implementation of political and civil rights as set out in the new constitution.

Lord Monson: My Lords, does the noble Baroness not agree that Chechnya is not historically part of Russia, as the Russian Government claim, but was conquered by force less than 150 years ago, wholly against the wishes of the inhabitants?

Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean: My Lords, I am sure that, historically speaking, the noble Lord, Lord Monson, must be right. If he is inviting me by implication therefore to retreat from the position of Her Majesty's Government on the territorial integrity of the Russian Federation, I cannot go that far. To use the analogy of the noble Lord, Lord Monson, many states would break up on that basis. The noble Lord would be in some difficulty in pursuing his analogy.

Lord Ahmed: My Lords, will the Minister say something about abuses of human rights, particularly those perpetrated by the Russian forces and Chechen fighters? Are the excesses more by the Chechen fighters or by the Russian forces? Will Her Majesty's Government encourage the Russian Government to sign up to the International Criminal Court so that soldiers responsible for human rights abuses can be brought to justice?

Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean: My Lords, Her Majesty's Government encourage all governments—the noble Lord mentioned the Russian Federation; let me also mention the United States of America—to sign up to the International Court. The noble Lord asks me to adjudicate on which violence is worse. I believe that there is violence on both sides, as I have illustrated. I have said that we believe there is violence on the part of the Russian authorities. I stressed that there is violence by the militant groups. We have also stressed that the Russian authorities must respect their obligations under the 1951 UN Convention on Refugees and that all movements of internally displaced persons must be strictly voluntary. We last did so during our human rights discussions with the Russian MFA only last week.

Government Annual Reports

Lord Smith of Clifton: asked Her Majesty's Government:
	What was the original intention in producing the Government's annual reports; why these ceased after three years; and whether there is any likelihood of their being resumed.

Lord Williams of Mostyn: My Lords, the information in the annual report was a collation of existing publicly available material, and we have decided not to continue with it. The Government will, of course, continue to report to Parliament and the public on their performance through a variety of means, such as reports, statistical bulletins, Ministerial Statements and Parliamentary Questions.

Lord Smith of Clifton: My Lords, I thank the noble and learned Lord for that reply. It is not as characteristically robust as his replies to me usually are, but that is because his officials who had notice of my Question found it difficult to give him more material.
	Does the noble and learned Lord agree with me that the annual reports were launched with a great fanfare of publicity and were an interesting new part of the repertoire of public accountability on the part of governments? I regret that we do not have them, because it is convenient to have between two covers all the statistics and the targets missed or otherwise. What would be the Government's attitude if, for example, a company finding itself in troubled waters, such as Monsanto or Cable & Wireless, suddenly decided that it did not wish to produce any more annual reports?

Lord Williams of Mostyn: My Lords, there are a number of differences, to which I shall come in a moment. The noble Lord asked me two questions originally: first, whether the reports were produced with a great fanfare, to which the answer is yes, and, secondly, whether they were desperately interesting—ahem.
	I now turn to the failing companies. Certainly I would be quite happy to be employed by any of those failing companies, because I would probably receive a pay-off of about £6 million for demonstrated failure.

Lord Campbell of Croy: My Lords, were not the annual reports intended originally to provide publicity for the Government's activities, but they ran out of material and steam, despite the efforts of spin doctors? Are they now presumably to be discontinued for the same reason?

Lord Williams of Mostyn: My Lords, they were tried on three occasions. The response was not perhaps universal. The total cost was quite significant. No one could sensibly believe that there is not abundant material available—some would say too much. If the noble Lord believes that it was a waste of time and spin, he ought to rejoice, because the sinner has repented.

Baroness O'Cathain: My Lords, does the noble and learned Lord have some amazing crystal ball that said it would be better to stop producing annual reports because Higgs was going to report on corporate governance and therefore the annual report would require a performance evaluation of every board member and everything that the board did?

Lord Williams of Mostyn: My Lords, I do have a crystal ball: we are going to win the next election.

Lord McNally: My Lords, could not officials also have provided the noble and learned Lord the Leader of the House with a more direct Answer—I was going to say "honest"—along the lines that it was a merry wheeze dreamt up in the early stages of the Labour Government's life to get free political advertising provided from the public purse? As the noble and learned Lord has conceded that it was an error, should not the costs be refunded to the public purse by the Labour Party?
	Moreover, as that publication and others were sanctioned by somebody in government, can the Minister tell us where authority lies for judgments on whether public money should be spent on publications? Is it political or public spending? At one stage, it was considered that the buck stopped with a political appointee, Mr Alastair Campbell. Does the director of the Central Office of Information report to Mr Alastair Campbell or to a responsible Minister? Who takes responsibility for that important area of public spending, in which, as the noble and learned Lord conceded, the Government have erred in the past?

Lord Williams of Mostyn: My Lords, I did not say that it was an error; I said that it had been tried. It was tried on three occasions: 1997–98, 1998–99 and 1999–2000. It was then discontinued, but a comprehensive report was put to the electorate in, I think, 2001, and they seemed to be pleased with what we had done. The reports were signed off—sanctioned, in other words—by the then Cabinet Secretary.

Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, will the noble and learned Lord say what the cost was over each of those three years?

Lord Williams of Mostyn: My Lords, as it happens, I have that material to hand. The total cost in the first year was £250,000; for the second year, it was £180,000; and, in the third year—showing what an excellent, prudent Government we have—it went down to £125,000.

Iraq

Lord Roberts of Conwy: asked Her Majesty's Government:
	Whether a simple majority of the Security Council of the United Nations in favour of the draft resolution submitted by Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States would be sufficient justification for the United Kingdom to invade Iraq.

Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean: My Lords, as I told the House and as my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary said in another place on 25th November, following the adoption of Resolution 1441, the preference of the Government, in the event of a further material breach by Iraq, is for a second Security Council resolution. Resolution 1441 warns Iraq that it will face serious consequences as a result of its continued violation of its obligations.
	As my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary said in November, we must reserve our position, in the event that the council does not live up to its responsibilities under the resolution. We have repeatedly said that we will always act in accordance with international law.

Lord Roberts of Conwy: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness. Will she confirm that Her Majesty's Government take the view that, if the resolution is not, for some reason, passed by the Security Council, that will not debar the Government from military action against Iraq for lack of proper legal authority? Can the noble Baroness reconcile that view with that of the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, who said:
	"If the US and others go outside the Security Council and take unilateral action, they would not be in conformity with the charter"?

Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean: My right honourable friends the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary are working very hard to secure a second Security Council resolution. I will not say anything that would prejudice the chances of a successful outcome for those negotiations. I said what I had to say about reserving our position in my Answer.
	The noble Lord asked about the Secretary-General of the United Nations. Kofi Annan has been saying—we have all been saying—that it is important for the United Nations to come together. That is exactly what we have been trying to ensure. It is why we have tried to provide a basis—a compromise—even at this late stage, on which we can resolve the matter properly. Trying to secure agreement in the United Nations is more complicated when one member of the P5 says that it will veto a resolution in any circumstances.

Lord Wallace of Saltaire: My Lords, I hope that the Minister will accept that many of us did not hear the Secretary-General saying what he said. Yesterday, the Prime Minister spoke of bringing the international community as a whole together on the issue. There are questions of legality with regard to the UN Charter and to voting procedures, which require nine votes. There is also the broader question of legitimacy and acceptance by the international community that action is justified. Does the Minister accept that, by that standard, the British and American Governments have not yet succeeded in persuading the international community in the way that the Prime Minister suggested yesterday?

Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean: My Lords, I concede that there is a strongly argued position to be held on both sides of the question. It would be extraordinary to succeed in persuading the whole international community to adopt one position, as things stand and given the events of the past few days.
	I remind the noble Lord that the international community came together effectively around UNSCR 1441. My right honourable friends the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary are negotiating with every ounce of their strength to ensure that that international consensus survives.

Baroness Ramsay of Cartvale: My Lords, does my noble friend the Minister agree that the case for military action against Iraq does not begin or rest with the draft resolution referred to in the Question or with Resolution 1441? It rests with Resolution 678 of 1990 and all the subsequent Chapter VII resolutions about Iraq.

Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean: My Lords, I agree very strongly with my noble friend. It is not just a question of Resolution 678, the resolution containing the decision to take military action against Iraq. There is also Resolution 687, which led to the suspension of that military action.
	We sometimes refer to what we are discussing as the "second resolution". I remind your Lordships that it is the 18th resolution on the issue. As my noble friend pointed out, the resolutions were made under the mandatory chapter, Chapter VII.

Lord Howell of Guildford: My Lords, does the noble Baroness agree, further to the remarks made by the noble Baroness, Lady Ramsay of Cartvale, that, as members of the United Nations have voted no fewer than 17 times to compel Saddam Hussein to disarm and to use all measures to do so, it would be reasonable to conclude that any further pressure, including force, had UN approval and was internationally legal? They are complex matters, on which we all, understandably, seek reassurance.
	We appreciate that legal advice from the noble and learned Lord the Attorney-General is confidential, as is right and proper. However, would it not be helpful, in the debate to be introduced by the Liberal Democrats on Monday, to have his presence and guidance? If he cannot help us on this difficult issue, he could help us with the broader issues affecting the Armed Forces in a conflict, now that we operate under the International Criminal Court system, which raises new and complex problems.

Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean: My Lords, in answer to the first part of the noble Lord's question, I shall repeat what the Prime Minister said yesterday in another place:
	"As the Foreign Secretary has pointed out, resolution 1441 gives the legal basis for this. The reason we have been seeking a second resolution is . . . that it is highly desirable to demonstrate the unified will of the international community".—[Official Report, Commons, 12/3/03; col. 284.]
	That is the Prime Minister's view. It is good enough for me and, I hope, for the noble Lord.
	I thank the noble Lord for the way in which he put his question about the advice of the noble and learned Lord the Attorney-General. I remind him, however, that, by a long-standing convention that has been observed by successive governments, the fact and substance of Law Officers' advice are not disclosed outside the Government. That convention is reflected in paragraph 24 of the ministerial code. I believe that the noble Lord will also find it reflected on page 389 of Erskine May.
	Law Officers' advice is given to the Government in confidence. If the department to which the advice is given wishes to disclose the advice, it may do so with the consent of the Law Officers. In practice, that is rarely done.

Lord Davies of Coity: My Lords—

Lord Sheldon: My Lords—

Lord Grocott: My Lords, we shall hear from my noble friend Lord Sheldon.

Lord Sheldon: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that in Stalinist times in the post-war years the Foreign Minister at the time drew the distinction between a "No" vote and a veto? When he voted "No", the Security Council assumed it was a veto. He said, "No, it was not". That is the precedent for our times, which has not been changed. We must not assume that any "No" votes will be a veto in the event of such votes being cast.

Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean: My Lords, the noble Lord raises an interesting point—which I am sure has already registered with my right honourable friends in another place. I shall ensure that it is conveyed to them. What has been so difficult about the position articulated from the other side of the Channel this week is the use of the words, "in any circumstances whatsoever". That has been very difficult. However, I shall certainly convey the point raised by my noble friend Lord Sheldon and I thank him for it.

Regional Assemblies (Preparations) Bill

House again in Committee on Clause 1.

Viscount Allenby of Megiddo: I call Amendment No. 3.

Baroness Hamwee: I believe that, just before the sitting was suspended, we were about to hear the Minister respond to the previous group of amendments.

Lord Rooker: We were about to hear the Minister only if no one else stood up. I have already been told off today. I was a pupil of my noble friend Lord Stoddart when he was a Government Whip in another place. I learnt all the etiquette of procedure. I am aware that I am here to answer questions in Committee as often as required. I shall do my best—indeed, in the manner in which I was taught by my noble friend.
	The expression "cart before the horse" was used. I throw that back at Members of the Committee who referred to it. If there was ever a case of the cart being before the horse, it was to demand detailed information about the functions and powers of a regional assembly in advance of the Bill on the referendum. It has been made clear that, before the referendum takes place, the electorate will have all that information at their disposal.
	Those concerns were indicated at Second Reading. I accept that. They were put strongly. There were concerns about people voting for or against establishing an elected assembly before the legislation to set up the assemblies was enacted. The White Paper, Your Region, Your Choice, sets out our proposals. I could refer many of today's speakers to various sections of the report which would answer some of the questions put. It is not that the discussion has not taken place. The White Paper sets out in substantial detail from where the assemblies will draw their functions and powers.
	The Government also said that that was the basis on which they hoped to introduce the legislation. I accept that we have not done that. Once we have received the recommendations from the Boundary Committee for local government in the region, we shall publish details of our proposals again. That will include a statement on how we intend to deal with the Boundary Committee's recommendations arising out of the local government review. People will then understand the consequences for local government. We shall also publish a summary of what an assembly would do and how it would work—before people cast their vote in the referendum. Therefore, there will be no argument that people will not have the necessary information.
	There is nothing new in that approach. It was a two-stage approach. It was used for London, Scotland and Wales. I take on board the spirit of the questions asked; namely, more information to be made available before people make a choice. We accept that in principle. We are not opposed—I repeat, not opposed—to publishing a draft Bill on the powers of the assemblies. However, there are timetable issues relating to that. Therefore, at present, I cannot give a firm commitment that it would be a draft Bill. Certainly, we shall publish a summary document of the issues on which the Bill will be based.
	I accept that a draft Bill would provide an opportunity for pre-legislative scrutiny. The Government have not ruled that out; it is a question of the timetable to which we are working. The argument concerning more information is covered in Amendments Nos. 5 and 6.
	I can answer one specific question. As we left the Chamber, the noble Lord, Lord Bowness, said that he would not be back at 3.30 p.m. As Members were being so emollient and civilised, I told him the answer to his question at the doorway. Therefore, I had better put that answer on the record. The question posed by the noble Lord was: will an elected assembly be a local authority? The answer is, "No". It will be legally distinct from a local authority, the GLA, the National Assembly for Wales and the Scottish Parliament. Those are different bodies with different functions. It will not be a local authority. There will be a legal distinction.
	In some ways, it is putting the cart before the horse. Before the referendum, which would be after the Boundary Committee has published its proposals, the Government will make a statement about how they intend to take forward the proposals of the Boundary Committee in the regions and produce a summary document about the way in which the assemblies will work and be set up.

Lord Stoddart of Swindon: I am grateful to the Minister for giving way. He answered the question about the status of the regional authority. He said that it would not be a local authority. Nor is it to be a government. Therefore, what will its status be? Will it have a status in its own right as a regional assembly and a regional authority? What will that status be?

Lord Rooker: I can only repeat what I previously said. The question posed by the noble Lord, Lord Bowness, asked for a definition of a local authority. The question was: will an elected assembly be a local authority? The specific answer is, "No". Regionally elected assemblies will be legally distinct from local authorities, the GLA, the National Assembly for Wales and the Scottish Parliament. They will have separate legal distinctions. They will be different bodies with different functions. Therefore, the answer to the question is that I cannot say in terms of a sub-clause or give a legal definition, but there will be a distinct definition of regional assemblies. They will not be classified in law as a local authority. That, of course, was the allegation in the question originally posed.
	The noble Baroness, Lady Blatch, raised the issue of the learning and skills councils. I shall become a tautologist if I continue repeating what I have said. The noble Baroness has been most generous and I therefore draw her attention to paragraph 4.29 on page 39 of the White Paper. That sets out the individual responsibilities of the elected assemblies and the learning skills councils. It may be that Members do not like that. However, it is set out.
	I shall not "over claim" for the elected regional assemblies. In some speeches today, there has been a thrust which suggests that the regional assemblies will not be as big as the Government have claimed. We have not made massive claims. We have been clinically calculating on what their function and role will be. I am partially criticised for pointing out that there will be no new money and no new powers. And nor will there be a new tier of government—I am adding that to the mantra now.
	We are not making super claims for the regional assemblies. We have been clear. It is set out in the White Paper. Further arguments have been put forward, then knocked down with comments such as, "Well, it's not going to have these powers". That was never the proposal. It is a modest advance in democratic accountability for the spending of huge sums of public money. That is to be welcomed.

Baroness Blatch: If it is a modest advance as regards the spending of huge sums of public money, I am grateful. But the learning and skills councils and the sector skills councils are concerned with skills in a regional context. If that is the case, and if there is to be no duplication, what on earth will be the relationship of the regional assembly to sector skills councils and to the national Sector Skills Council, to learning and skills councils and to the national Learning and Skills Development Agency?

Lord Rooker: I can confidently say that that will be set out in the summary of the powers placed before the people before they vote in a referendum.

Baroness Hamwee: I am sure the Minister will accept that what the Government propose may not be the same as what we end up with. My noble friend made that point earlier. I do not presume to speak for the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, but I hope that the Minister accepts that we on these Benches are keen to make progress, in the knowledge not only of what the Government propose but of what the final product might be.
	Having said that, I have completely forgotten the reason why I rose to my feet! I shall sit down again, and I may remember when I read Hansard.

The Earl of Caithness: If I intervene it may give the noble Baroness time to think of her question.
	Will the Minister clarify two points? Will the regional assembly, although not classed as a local authority, still be funded publicly either by central government or by local taxes from below? Therefore, although it is not strictly a local authority in the Minister's definition, will it be a local authority quango or some equivalent definition?
	I am confused on a second point relating to the functions of the assemblies. Shall we in this Chamber be able to debate, amend, and persuade the Government to change some of the functions that they propose to give to regional assemblies before the people in an area are given a chance to vote? Or shall we be cut out of the process as from now?

Lord Stoddart of Swindon: It may be convenient if I raise two questions at this point. The Minister did not comment on the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, about the relationship with the European Union. That is important—because there is a relationship. The Commission has offices in all the regional "capitals"—it has a presence in the regions—and, through local authority members, there will be a presence in Brussels itself. The noble Lord, Lord Pearson, may want to enlarge on that point. It is a question that needs comment.
	The Minister says that the regional assemblies will spend huge amounts of money, and that the quangos will not be brought under the democratic control of the regional authorities. But they spend £50 billion a year. If my arithmetic is correct, that is between 12 and 15 per cent of the total national tax take. Yet they are not to be democratised in any way. That is something of a lacuna which I am sure the Minister would like to address.

Baroness Hamwee: I rarely follow the noble Lord's example, but I shall do so on this occasion—if not politically—and add to the list of points for the Minister to answer, having now remembered my question. It relates to the timing of the government proposals. Will the Minister be a little clearer as regards the obstacles? Is there a problem as regards the time of parliamentary counsel—which often presents difficulty; or is there some structural reason why a draft Bill will not be available for scrutiny as early as we should like? I am still seeking a way in which we might meet one another on this point.

Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville: My Lords, I did not speak before lunch—although not for dietary reasons—but the Minister addressed the idea of "the cart before the horse". I think I was responsible for introducing the concept at Second Reading (at col. 1277). I claim no intellectual property rights, nor do I have any emotional capital tied up in the phrase, but it was good of the Minister to address it given my small part in its introduction.
	In referring to the two-stage process, the Minister indicated that he cannot guarantee a draft Bill. I recall a similar process when we debated the Greater London Authority Bill. We had had an initial debate in another place on governance in London in June 1997. In that debate, I quoted the episode where Lord Home—as he then was not—had been asked during the 1964 general election about the government's intentions as regards VAT. He said that a lot of very clever men were thinking about it at that very moment. I said I had the impression that the same was true of what the government were going to do for London. Mr Raynsford, whose responsibilities have remained remarkably constant in this area over the past six years—although with extended and promoted levels—replied that I was perfectly right and that a lot of clever people were thinking about it. We then had the White Paper, and moved on to the Bill, which extended from 270 clauses when it first reached this place to 413 when it was placed on the statute book—indicating that the clever men had clearly had to work overtime in terms of extending the range of the Bill. It meant, inevitably, that we were looking at a moving target the whole time.
	In a Bill so directed towards strategy—as I understand this Bill will be—there was a whole series of strategies which the assembly and the authority were supposed to produce. I took the liberty of asking Ms Glenda Jackson, the Minister then in charge of the Bill, what would happen if the strategies were in conflict with each other. She was gracious enough to say that that could not happen, because the Bill prevented it; they were not allowed to be in conflict with each other. That did not seem quite as gracious as she might have been—which would have been to explain how the differences would be resolved. At this juncture, I am reassured by the Minister's remarks—although on the basis of past experience I have lingering doubts about how it will all turn out in the end.

Lord Rooker: I think that we all have lingering doubts on everything that we are dealing with. One always has to be careful about the unintended consequences of what one is proposing.
	As regards the timetable, we are some period away from any referendum that might take place. The Bill will have to receive Royal Assent. Only after Royal Assent will the Secretary of State give his views to Parliament about soundings in the regions; and the Electoral Commission and the Boundary Committee will have to review local government. The estimate is that that will take about 12 months. I cannot even forecast the publication of the draft housing Bill—which is supposed to be later this month—let alone talk about the Bill to set up assemblies, with all their powers, which is 12 months away at the earliest, if there are to be referendums.
	We are not opposed in principle to providing a draft Bill in advance of the referendums. There is no policy difference. There are timetable issues that will determine whether that is feasible. I suspect that there may well be resource implications. Nevertheless, we have to be so far advanced in order to publish a summary of how we propose that the assembly will work before people cast their vote. All that would have to be in place. On the basis of that, we should know how the Bill would be drafted.
	On the question on which I am tempted by the noble Lords, Lord Stoddart and Lord Pearson, this is not a cop-out. The White Paper is there for everyone to read. Chapter 8—pages 58 to 62—sets out the powers and the relationship with other bodies, including Parliament, the Council of the Regions and the EU, and other matters. I cannot go beyond the content of the White Paper. If I ask for a note from my officials, it will simply draw my attention to paragraphs in the White Paper. I do not think that Members of the Committee would thank me for reading out four pages of the White Paper.

Baroness Blatch: Does the noble Lord accept that what he has just said causes huge anxiety? We have tried to make sense of the White Paper. The Government are not able to give details of what the relevant phrases in the White Paper mean. When I spoke on the amendment earlier I referred to certain words in the White Paper and asked what they meant. The Minister simply tells us to wait for the referendum, which is possibly a year or more away—I do not blame him as, clearly, the matter also involves the department and the Deputy Prime Minister—depending on when the Deputy Prime Minister comes to Parliament to say that there will be a referendum in a particular part of the country. However, we want to know what pages 58 to 62 of the document mean and what the powers comprise.
	The Minister has not yet referred to the point that we raised this morning with regard to the power that he mentioned on Second Reading; that is, a power to the assembly from national government, which turned out on reflection not to be a power. Is he able to give us examples of powers that will be transferred from central government to regional assemblies? I refer to powers and not to parts to play in the process or influence on it or a duty to promote the results of it. Will the Minister tell us what the words mean? It is important that we understand that. If the Government cannot tell us that until a referendum takes place, we are travelling blind with the Bill.

The Earl of Caithness: In the hope that if I intervene the Fifth Cavalry might come to the help of the Minister, I hope that he will consider answering my question about our being able to debate functions before they are put to a referendum, and whether we can alter them before such a referendum takes place.

Lord Pearson of Rannoch: I seek to give the Minister a little more time to think of the answers to the questions that I put to him, which were repeated to some extent by the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, who pointed out that the regions that we are discussing already have offices in Brussels. Brussels already has its tentacles in our existing regions and sends some of our taxpayers' money back to those regions in the guise of EU aid. So, whatever the White Paper may say—it did not help me on this point and I did not find it elucidating—what will be the interface between the new regional assemblies and Brussels? Can the noble Lord give the Committee the assurance that the new assemblies will not eventually have tax raising powers, with some of those taxes ending up in Brussels?

Lord Rooker: I repeat that we are dealing with a Bill that paves the way for the referendum. The referendum is well over 12 months away at the earliest. I am asked to dissect the White Paper in detail. Amendment No. 5 requires us to publish a draft Bill before we proceed with the referendum. Frankly, if I accept the amendment—which I cannot do for the reasons I have explained—I suspect that Members of the Committee would then ask what would be in the draft Bill and I would still be in the same position. The Committee will have to wait until it is available as we are talking about a matter that is more than 12 months away.
	I cannot give precise detailed answers to all of the questions that have been asked as regards relations between the assemblies and Brussels and the Council of the Regions. I refer to Chapter 8 of the document. That is as far as we have gone publicly. I have nothing further to add. I do not have to wait for the cavalry. I have nothing further to say about Chapter 8. Before the electorate vote whether or not to have an elected regional assembly, we shall be in a position to address the powers and responsibilities that we are discussing at least in summary form and, at best, in a draft Bill. As I said, I have not ruled out a draft Bill. It is purely a question of not committing to a certain timetable so far in advance. I cannot give that commitment.

Baroness Hanham: I thank the Minister for that response. He is in some difficulty here as I do not think that anyone has thought through how the public will be advised on the matter. My heart goes out to the Minister as I believe that he is struggling where he should not have to.
	At the moment the Government are relying on the population having read the White Paper. If the Government think that people have read the White Paper, they are living in Cloud-cuckoo-land. No one reads White Papers except politicians and a few other people who need to know something about them. Therefore, the Government cannot rely on that. The Government cannot rely on the White Paper anyway as the White Paper does not spell out in detail what regional assemblies will do or what their powers and structures will be.
	We have learnt today that a regional assembly is not a local authority. Therefore, it must be something else. But the situation vis-a-vis regional assemblies is not the same as that which pertains in Scotland, Wales or London. We need to know what a regional assembly is and under what provisions such a legal entity will operate. It seems to me that we have to sort out not only the powers and structures of the regional assembly but also where it fits in with any kind of governance within this country. The matters about which we need to know are widening out.
	I appreciate that this is meant to be paving legislation but it requires people to know what the matter is all about. I do not think that it is good enough simply to say rather airily that the relevant details will be made known before the referendum takes place. If they are as clear as the text of the White Paper, no one will understand them. As I said before, this matter needs to be discussed by Parliament. The powers and structures need to be scrutinised by Parliament to enable Members to determine what they will involve before they are voted upon by the electorate. I have referred to a pig in a poke. I say again that the electorate are being sold a pig in a poke if they are not given a proper account of what they are voting for.
	Recently I visited the north of England. What is being said there about what regional assemblies will do bears absolutely no relation to what the Minister said today. High flown views are being expressed about how the assemblies will act and about all the wonderful things that they will do. That is happening because there is a vacuum and it will continue as long as that vacuum persists.
	I shall withdraw the amendment today but I advise the Minister that I shall return to the matter as it constitutes a serious part of the paving Bill. To expect the country, or any part of it, even to vote whether it wants a regional assembly when it does not know what a regional assembly will do is thoroughly dishonest. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Baroness Hamwee: moved Amendment No. 3:
	Page 1, line 6, leave out "an" and insert "a directly"

Baroness Hamwee: In moving Amendment No. 3, I wish to speak also to Amendment No. 30. With Amendment No. 3 we come to the second line of the text. I think I can promise the Committee that this debate will be shorter than those on the previous groups of amendments, possibly even the shortest on the whole Bill.
	I propose that the assemblies be referred to not just as elected assemblies but as directly elected assemblies. I propose that phrase also in the question to be posed to the electorate under Clause 2.
	At present there are bodies that are known as assemblies. Strictly they are regional chambers established under the Regional Development Agencies Act 1998, but I believe that all of them now refer to themselves as assemblies. They may not be the best known bodies in their regions although they are not unknown by any means. Their role may well adopt a higher profile as the debate continues. It is best to avoid as much confusion as possible. As we have said, there is enough confusion already without adding to it. I seek to avoid the possibility of those who oppose the question as set out in the Bill answering it with the words, "But there already is an elected assembly". I beg to move.

Lord Evans of Temple Guiting: In speaking to the amendment, I shall try to be as brief as the noble Baroness. The amendment seeks to clarify that the regional assemblies will be directly elected. I assure noble Lords that that is the Government's clear intention. I understand the argument that it might be helpful to make it clearer in the referendum question and preamble that the assemblies will be directly elected. But the issue is not as simple as putting in a single word. I understand that nowhere in electoral law is "direct election" specifically defined. More importantly, I am not convinced how helpful it would be in practice to voters in the polling booth. I think that all voters understand what an elected assembly means but would the meaning of "directly elected" be clear to them? I fear that the amendment raises more questions than answers. I believe that it would be better to explain clearly in our statement before the referendum the intended voting system. Therefore, I ask the noble Baroness to withdraw the amendment and not to move Amendment No. 30.

Baroness Blatch: The White Paper suggests a list system. Are the Government able to say "directly elected"? Some people will be directly elected and others will be elected as top-up members among the party. It is not that the population would not understand but that the Government do not intend that there should be wholly direct elections.

Lord Evans of Temple Guiting: I did not deal with that question because the White Paper sets out in some details the proposed electoral system for the assemblies. We plan to adopt the member system form of proportional representation for assembly elections.

Baroness Blatch: I am sorry to persist, but that is relevant to the amendment. The elections are either direct elections or they are partly direct elections. That should be the Government's answer, not that the public do not understand. We should not patronise the public in this way.

Lord Evans of Temple Guiting: Our intention is to make our instructions for the electorate as clear as possible. I argued that if the word "directly" is introduced, the electorate will find it confusing. I do not think that that is patronising.

The Earl of Onslow: Are people so stupid that they do not understand the word "directly"? I may have only five O-levels but I understand the word "directly" and I am no more intelligent, clever or better educated than the vast majority of the British electorate. Of course they can understand. To patronise them in this way is not very attractive.

Lord Evans of Temple Guiting: We are proceeding down a cul-de-sac. We are proposing the same language as has been used for Wales, Scotland and the London Assembly.

Baroness Blatch: These are not the same bodies as the London, Welsh or Scottish parliaments.

Lord Evans of Temple Guiting: Of course they are not the same but the electoral system is the same.

Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville: I am not sure whether the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, is about to wind up. However, in light of the Minister's remarks, given the second line of the Prime Minister's preface to the White Paper in which he says,
	"It delivers on our Manifesto commitment to provide for directly elected regional assemblies in those regions that want them",
	it is a little surprising that the Government should be so infirm of purpose that they refuse an amendment to the Bill which refers to "directly".

Lord Evans of Temple Guiting: That is amusing. Things have moved on since the Prime Minister made his introduction. We have taken advice from various sources including the Electoral Commission which is absolutely happy with what we propose.

Lord Stoddart of Swindon: I do not understand why the Minister makes such a fuss about it. The noble Earl, Lord Onslow, put it well when he asked, "Are people stupid?" People are not stupid. The electorate are much wiser and more knowledgeable than politicians think. People know that direct elections mean that they go to a polling booth or have a postal or proxy vote and they put a cross against a name. That is what direct elections mean to the general population.
	It could mean something different to the politically aware. For example, it could mean to local authorities—it may make regional assemblies more acceptable to them—that election means any kind of election, direct or indirect. In other words, the local authorities would elect members to the regional assemblies. They would still be elected but they would not have been elected directly by the Government. It sounds like a niggling point but it is very important.
	Perhaps I may refer to the Royal Commission on Local Government and my service on the Association of Municipal Corporations' reorganisation of local government committee. It proposed that the provinces should be elected from among the local authorities. So there is a difference. It is understood in political circles. So far as concerns the electorate, "direct elections" mean that they go to the polling stations and put a cross on the ballot paper.

Lord Evans of Temple Guiting: We are left with the problem that there is no definition of "directly elected". We have consulted with expert bodies whose advice is that it would be confusing to use the word when talking about regional assemblies. At the risk of boring noble Lords, I have to repeat that we are proposing exactly the same electoral system for regional assemblies as has been used for the Welsh, Scottish and London assemblies.

Baroness Hanham: Perhaps the Minister will be kind enough to direct my attention to the difference between what is proposed now and paragraph 4.22 on page 38 which states:
	"The Regional Development Agencies will become directly accountable to the relevant elected assembly".
	I am not sure of the difference.

Lord Skelmersdale: Before the Minister answers, although I am not a lawyer and have not been trained as a lawyer, I have learned over many years in your Lordships' House that in the absence of a definitions clause the courts take the view that words in Acts of Parliament have their natural meaning. It is obvious that in this instance the natural meaning is right, common sense and direct. I understand that there is no proposal for having indirect elections in these assemblies.

Lord Evans of Temple Guiting: The noble Lord is right. The meaning was precisely the same for elections for Scotland and England. There was no need for any embellishment. Everyone appears to have understood the situation.

Baroness Blatch: Although Parliament approved those Acts of Parliament there was a great deal of disagreement on the Bill. We had similar debates to our present discussion. Paragraph 4.29 on page 39 states:
	"The assembly will appoint two members to each of the Boards of the local learning and skills councils . . . in its region, one of whom will have a business background, and will be consulted on other appointments".
	Whatever the meaning of "directly elected" or "elected", in the area from which I come it is possible to have 25 members without one of them being a business person. How is it possible to make a business person's appointment to the local learning and skills councils if he or she has not been elected, directly or otherwise?

Earl Ferrers: I wish to come to the help of the Minister. Every single speaker has spoken in favour of including the words "directly elected". The Minister is keen to keep to his brief and he has been well advised, but it would not do any harm if he were gracious enough to say, "I will consider it". There is no harm or humiliation in that, and it would be a gesture to the Committee, suggesting that the Minister will at least consider what has been said. If, after consideration, he decides that his original view was right, he can stick to it.

Lord Evans of Temple Guiting: I am grateful for that suggestion, and I accept it.

Baroness Hamwee: I am grateful for that acceptance, but I must respond to three points. I should declare an interest, because I regard myself as a directly elected member of the London Assembly—elected through the additional member system on the so-called London-wide list. I distinguish that from a previous position, when, as member of the London Planning Advisory Committee, I was indirectly elected. I had been elected to a London borough, and, as a member of the borough, I was nominated as a member of the London Planning Advisory Committee. I regard my responsibilities as a London-wide directly elected member of the London Assembly—

Baroness Seccombe: I thank the noble Baroness for giving way. Was she not directly elected by her party, rather than by the wider population?

Baroness Hamwee: I would not have become a member of the London Assembly had not the wider population—the electorate—voted for my party. I accept that the systems are different, but the electorate had the opportunity to vote for members who ended up as London-wide list members. I admit that the system is by no means easy for the electorate to follow, which is one of my difficulties with it.

The Earl of Onslow: Before the noble Baroness sits down—

Baroness Hamwee: I am nowhere near sitting down.

The Earl of Onslow: Should the elected hereditary Peers who have spoken declare whether they were directly or indirectly elected?

Baroness Hamwee: I shall leave that question hanging.
	My second point is more serious and relates to the amendment more directly. The distinction between the proposals in this Bill and the measures made in relation to London, Wales and Scotland is that, when the referendums took place, no other assembly or body could be confused with the one about to be elected.
	Finally, I understand that one must be careful with language and I take the Minister's point about there being no definition of "directly elected". I shall try to resist the temptation to return with such a definition. The preamble, which is intended to be straightforward and non-legalistic, refers to "central government bodies". Is that term defined anywhere? Perhaps we may take this matter forward before the next stage. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Lord Greaves: moved Amendment No. 4:
	Page 1, line 7, at end insert "after the Boundary Committee for England have reviewed the numbers and boundaries of the regions specified in Schedule 1 to the Regional Development Agencies Act 1998 (c. 45) and reported their recommendations to the Secretary of State"

Lord Greaves: I return to the theme of the debate on Amendment No. 1 on regional boundaries. During that debate, we showed that we had considerable sympathy with the case made from the Conservative Front Bench. The boundaries of existing regions are not necessarily the boundaries that would command greatest support from the people in those regions in a referendum, and mechanisms should be available for changes to be made to boundaries.
	The amendments offer three different options for consideration, which we believe are more straightforward and workable than the option suggested in Amendment No. 1.
	Amendment No. 4 is similar to Amendment No. 1, but simpler. It would require the Boundary Committee for England to review,
	"the numbers and boundaries of the regions specified in Schedule 1 to the Regional Development Agencies Act 1998".
	The Minister will say that that would cause delay, which is true. However, in most cases, delays will occur anyway.
	There is no suggestion that referendums will be held in the majority of English regions, and it is far from clear from our information that referendums in any English region can be won. There is a general view that a referendum might be won in the North East, but I am far from certain that a referendum would be won in the North West on the basis of existing government proposals. Those who believe that it will be a walkover are living in cloud cuckoo land.
	If there is concern about regional boundaries, it would be more sensible for the concern to be aired before the referendums take place. The amendment would allow that to happen.
	The other options are less severe. The option set out in Amendment No. 25 would allow a division of a region,
	"into two or more areas",
	if the Secretary of State believed that to be sensible.
	The amendment would allow Cornwall, for example, to be treated separately from the rest of the South West region. If a referendum for a regional assembly is to be won in the South West, the Cornish question must be treated head-on. People in Cornwall feel strongly about the question, and there is an active campaign for a Cornish assembly, called the Cornish Assembly Campaign. There is little support in Cornwall for a South West Assembly, based on the Bristol-based South West region, of which Cornwall would be part.
	What would happen if people voted "Yes" overall in a referendum in the South West region, but there was a substantial "No" vote in Cornwall? Presumably the vote would be known on more than just an aggregate basis—it would be known how different areas had voted. What would the democratic legitimacy be for that arrangement? Would it not set in train a series of tensions and problems in Cornwall and the new assembly? So our second option would allow the Secretary of State, where it was sensible, to say, "It is obvious that opinion in that area is that the region should be divided". It would allow referendums to proceed on that basis.
	Amendment No. 142 allows the Secretary of State to vary the boundaries of a region before a referendum. So if the Cumbrian question were thought crucial and soundings there suggested that it should be detached from the North West region, the amendment would allow it to stand alone or to be added to the North East. We think that tackling these matters before they become real problems—lancing the boil and getting sensible solutions—is likely to lead to much more sensible regional government in the long run. I beg to move.

Lord Waddington: I must confess that, half way through the noble Lord's speech, I was slightly distracted by the furniture removing in which my noble friend Lord Carlisle was indulging. Now that he has finished his exercise, we can address our minds again to this amendment.
	I am bound to say that I am thoroughly confused. I thought that the Liberal Democrat objection to Amendment No. 1 was that to have a thoroughgoing review of the regional boundaries before the Secretary of State could order a referendum was a complete waste of time. Indeed, the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, so forgot herself as to become very political and say that the whole thing was just a device by the Conservative Party to wreck the Bill. Here we have an amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, which has almost exactly the same effect. The Secretary of State will be prevented from ordering a referendum in any part of the country until there has been a review of the boundaries of every region and a careful examination as to whether there should be more or fewer regions than at present. For the life of me, I cannot understand why there was such a fuss from the Liberal Democrat Benches about Amendment No. 1. Having said that, I shall probably support Amendment No. 4 if they press it to a vote.

Baroness Blatch: I am just as bemused as my noble friend Lord Waddington. As we had a touching emphasis on one part of the world where the Liberal Democrats happen to be fairly strong, I just wonder whether there was a bit of special pleading. However, I, too, support the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, although not on the grounds that this is a Liberal Democrat amendment. As I said, opinion on regional assemblies is divided among Members on all Benches and members of all parties. Some people have particular concerns about particular aspects of this approach—that is, putting the cart before the horse, with the detail preceding the Bill by a year or more. Nevertheless, the effect of this group of amendments seems the same as that of Amendment No. 1. Amendment No. 4 does not mention Cornwall or parts of Lancashire. It says that each of the regions could be reviewed by the Boundary Committee. So it has our wholehearted support.

Lord Stoddart of Swindon: As the single Member of a party I would not dream of intervening in the dispute between the Liberal Benches and the Conservative Benches. However, I support this amendment, which does seem very similar in character to the first new clause. It really does give the Government an opportunity to think again about setting the existing boundaries in stone. The existing regional development agencies are not necessarily the right administrative areas for a democratically elected assembly. I am sorry to come back to that, but if the Government are going to do this—and I repeat that I think that they should not be doing it—it really is important that they should get it right. This amendment, like the previous one, gives them the opportunity to do so.
	I know that I should not help the Government out like this. Nevertheless, this amendment would help them out. If they got the regions right first, they would be more likely to get support for regional government than if they got them wrong. Furthermore, in any referendum, those who will sway the vote are the big urban authorities. We need somehow to persuade the small authorities that they are in favour of regional government. I hope that that is helpful to the Government. If they do not take the large urban conurbations with them as well as the smaller areas within the region, they will be in dead trouble. The smaller areas will never accept that they are part of the region unless they are being treated fairly so far as concerns boundaries and voting strength. I urge the Minister to take account of this amendment. Before he rejects it out of hand, and before further stages, I hope that he will give it some thought.

Lord Hanningfield: I support the amendment. As I said, I know that it is unlikely that we will have a region in the East or the South East. Nevertheless, Essex, for example, has had discussions with Hertfordshire—with which we have much in common—and would like to break away even within the existing development agency. This amendment would allow Essex and Hertfordshire to break away from the rest of the East of England. On the other hand, Amendment No. 1 would allow a more thorough examination of the whole of the South East and—as I said—the Thames Gateway, which covers Essex, Kent and London. If we were to have a region, it might be more logical if Essex were with Kent. So although I support this amendment—which would allow Essex and Hertfordshire to break away from East Anglia, with which we have nothing in common—if we are to have regions, it might be right to have a good discussion about whether we should be with Kent.
	I do not think that the Government realise the extent of the antagonism created by this issue across the country. I live daily with local government, where there is enormous debate and enormous unhappiness. With the exception of Yorkshire and Humberside and the North East, the country is in turmoil over these issues. The Government should recognise that they have opened a Pandora's box of dissatisfaction, and this debate is only adding to it.

Baroness Hamwee: I am sorry to have disappointed the noble Lord, Lord Waddington, by being political—but I am, as indeed is he. There is a major distinction between Amendment No. 1 and Amendment No. 4. Unlike Amendment No. 4, Amendment No. 1 would cause an inevitable delay. It is not just a matter of taking a rather broader brush approach and not spelling it out in detail, as the Conservatives have done. As we explained in that debate, we do not agree with some of the detail of their approach. They conclude that the Secretary of State has to make a further order, which is not inevitably the conclusion of Amendment No. 4.

Baroness Blatch: My understanding is that the order could not be made until after such a review. As it does not specify which part of the country is in question, it potentially could apply to any or every part of the country. If the order cannot be made until afterwards, my understanding is that both groups of amendments would produce the same result.

Baroness Hamwee: I do not read them in quite that way, and I did say "not inevitably". Yes, there is a possibility, but it is not inevitable.

The Earl of Onslow: The noble Baroness says that something could be understood in that way, but that that is not inevitable. Is it not a good idea to know what you mean before tabling an amendment? I know that the Liberals are unsound on home rule for Ireland, and I suppose that this is the same sort of thing. Would it not be possible for them to get their act together?

Baroness Hamwee: I know what I mean. I am going to explain in a moment why this amendment was tabled with Amendment No. 25 to which I do not believe any other Member of the Committee has referred. We have heard the Government speak of the "possibility"—I hesitate to use that word, but I cannot think of another at the moment—that after the first tranche of referendums there will be reviews of the boundaries of the regions which are not in the first tranche. There is a possibility—

Lord Rooker: We have to be careful here in the use of words because we are legislating and this is important. The noble Baroness has not heard the Government say what she has just claimed: that after the first tranche of referendums it is possible that the boundaries will be reviewed. Nobody has said that and I have to knock that statement on the head straightaway.
	I draw the attention of the noble Baroness to paragraph 6.5 of the White Paper which makes our intention clear about the exceptional circumstances of future changes. It has nothing to do with the interim changes which the noble Baroness has just implied.

Baroness Hamwee: In that case I am having difficulty with language as well. I shall try to present it in a different way. I had quite genuinely thought that there was reference to exceptional circumstances. There are parts of the country which are exceptional because they are very different, with different requirements and where the strength of feeling is very different from that in the majority of the country. That is what I understood the Minister to say, but I am grateful for the clarification.
	Nevertheless, I do not believe that it undermines the importance of Amendment No. 25. It may not be government policy, but having got through the first tranche, that will enable a review. I hope that I am not putting words into the Minister's mouth when I say that there is a general understanding that the Government want to get the first tranche dealt with. Then there will be a pause which, I hope, is not contentious, because when one pauses one generally reflects. During that period it would then be possible under our amendment for the Secretary of State and the rest of us to use the information, which will have come through the soundings exercise, to reflect on whether boundary changes would enable the advancement of regional government in other parts of the country. In that regard, these Benches are rather closer to the Government in that we are seeking to advance the cause of regional government.

Baroness Hanham: I am grateful to the noble Baroness for giving way. Will she accept from me that we do not know what the soundings exercise has been set against? It has not come to Parliament—and it is finished. We do not yet know on what basis the Deputy Prime Minister, who has the sole responsibility for making a decision, will make his decision. Therefore, we have no idea whether the question of regions and regional boundaries has even entered part of the soundings exercise.

Baroness Hamwee: I accept that entirely; nevertheless it must be on the cards that some of the responses must have been, "We would like regional government but on different boundaries". That is all I am attempting to reflect through this amendment.

Lord Rooker: Someone said a little while ago that there was a lot of antagonism out there. I am being antagonised because this morning supporters of the Bill opposed what is very much a delaying tactic in Amendment No. 1. It does not matter how one looks at the wording, the meaning presents exactly the same picture. That leaves me in a very difficult position. I have a set of speaking notes, but the magic ink on the page calls out at me, "Don't bother with this. Go back and read the speech you read out this morning". If I could transpose for Hansard, it would be a great deal easier to say "Take out a couple of columns from the morning and stick them in here". That is because the arguments are exactly the same.
	What the noble Baroness said as regards what she believed we had said about the longer-term possibilities of looking at boundaries is rather like what another noble Baroness said earlier about people elsewhere in the country making a much bigger issue of this matter than it is, having not read the words. I am not trying to over-sell the product, but to sell it honestly so that I am not "done" by the Office of Fair Trading later for misleading on the policy.
	I have to draw the attention of the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, to paragraph 6.5 of the White Paper which states,
	"The Government has not completely ruled out in the longer term the possibility of adopting boundaries for regional assemblies that do not follow the existing boundaries".
	We recognise that they cannot be set in stone. But we would change them only under exceptional circumstances and in the longer term. We have no current intention of changing the regional boundaries in the short to medium term. People can argue—please don't!—definitions of short, medium and longer term. But it may be that a future government would want to change the Government Office structure for the country for various reasons. That is a possibility. One would look at the mechanism for that. But to build into the Bill the mechanism by which the Liberal Democrats seek to cast doubt about the boundaries leaves a clear implication.
	The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, keeps inviting me to agree with him, but I shall not. He seems to know when the referendums will take place, but I do not. We have made no plans and there have been no public pronouncements whatever. One can argue as much as one likes, but until the Deputy Prime Minister makes an announcement after the soundings, nobody knows, including myself. If there were a referendum; a successful "Yes" vote and an elected regional assembly was set up, then, according to the thinking of the Liberal Democrats, the Government could look at the boundaries and it would be possible to affect the boundaries of the region which had just been created.
	There would be a massive degree of confusion built into the legislation by accepting these amendments. If the noble Baroness remotely supports regionally elected assemblies—they are not home rule—I invite her to take what is on offer as set out. I have to tell the noble Baroness that acceptance of the amendments would leave the Bill dead in its tracks. Amendment No. 4 would mean that the order creating the referendum could not be made until the Boundary Committee for England conducted a review of the numbers and boundaries and reported its recommendations. However, there are no powers for the Boundary Committee to carry out such a review. I pointed out this morning that it would take four years to cover the whole country.

Lord Greaves: These debates range fairly wide. The noble Earl, Lord Onslow, said that the Liberals have always been unsound on home rule for Ireland.

The Earl of Onslow: I said that the party was split over home rule for Northern Ireland. I know my history.

Lord Greaves: The problem was that some of the Liberals were sound and some were not, so the party split rather disastrously. If the Prime Minister in 1885 had has his way Ireland would have been a much better place than it has been.
	We regret that we are not talking about home rule. We are quite honest about this. We want to agree with the Conservatives here, but we do not. I return to the fact that we are living in the real world as defined by the Government. We are being offered a limited amount of as yet unspecified power for regional assemblies in unspecified places. I do not know whether any public announcements have been made about where the first referendum will take place. We believe what the department's civil servants brief when they talk to campaigners in the regions; we believe what the spin doctors say and what appears in the press and is not denied. We may be wrong to believe that, but until the Minister or anyone else in the Government tells us that we are wrong, we shall continue to believe that what the Government are saying privately is what they are going to do publicly in due course.
	I do not want to discuss Amendment No. 1 again except to say that we did not agree with it because of its content. One can understand why when one looks at it.
	The Government are doing everything the wrong way around. They should have started by considering regional boundaries. They could have done so for the past two years but wasted time. The Government ought to decide the first regions where referendums will take place, then consult on them. That is fundamental. If I am accused of special pleading for Cornwall or Cumbria, it makes a change from all the special pleading for Essex—though I do not blame those concerned because everywhere is important.
	After deciding which regions are which, the Government ought to produce legislation that sets out the English assemblies' powers, duties and size, and the electoral system. In fact, they could do the two together. Then the legislation and decision to go ahead with referendums ought to follow, so that we— and, more importantly, the voters— know what the Government intend.
	It is not clear why the Government are doing everything the wrong way around except that they did the same in Scotland, Wales and Greater London. Certainly there were lengthy discussions in Scotland, with a report and agreement on what would happen and how it was to work. That is not the case with the English regions. This debate is rambling on because the public do not know what is on offer. It is difficult to agree on vague proposals—especially when they will be the subject of referendums.
	The Government say that the proposed electoral system is identical to those used for Wales, Scotland and Greater London but although they are all additional member systems, they differ in detail—for example, in the proportion of the top-up and the size of the top-up areas. All those things matter. The Minister says that people will know about the electoral system being used. How will they know? This Parliament might change the electoral system between the time of the referendum and establishing an assembly.
	The Government should first examine the regions, but it does not have to be a long process. Secondly, the Government should build in a mechanism to change the regional boundaries if it turns out that they are not sensible. Not to do that will put obstacles in the way. People will say, "We might want a regional assembly but we are not going to vote for one in that area. We will vote for one in Cornwall but not in the South West". The Government should look at the options before decisions are made on referendums.

Baroness Hanham: The noble Lord, the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, and ourselves are moving along more or less the same lines—that there must first be a review of boundaries. What elements of our proposals for Clause 1 do Members of the Liberal Democrat Benches dislike? The noble Baroness suggested that she does not like the equal population size proposal. All the other measures invite proposals from representative bodies. We have also asked the Electoral Commission to table proposals and suggested that boundaries should reflect the identities and interests of local communities. We have further asked the Electoral Commission to publish the proposals. We have even suggested consulting with all the relevant interests, including the local electorate.

Lord Greaves: I set out some of our objections when speaking to Amendment No. 1. The first paragraph of the proposed new clause is a clumsy way to start the process. If the noble Baroness wishes to pursue the matter, perhaps we can discuss it with her before Report stage. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
	[Amendments Nos. 5 and 6 not moved.]

Baroness Hanham: moved Amendment No. 7:
	Page 1, line 8, at end insert—
	"( ) The boundaries of a region subject to a referendum order under subsection (1) will be specified by the Secretary of State."

Baroness Hanham: This amendment requires the Secretary of State to specify the boundaries, and that proposition returns the Committee to the information that will be available to electors at the time of a referendum. Clause 1 makes no mention of what lies within the boundaries of the eight regions that are to be voted on when a referendum is called. We only have Clause 26, which informs us that a region is a region as defined in the Regional Development Agencies Act 1998.
	Amendment No. 7 would ensure that the Secretary of State must specify a region's boundaries when he orders a referendum, so that voters are clear about what the region comprises. Amendment No. 143 defines regions in the same way as Clause 26.
	I argued earlier that the preferable option was that there should be a comprehensive review of boundaries before any referendums are held. However, if we pursue the general thrust of the present provisions, we can take a rather different stance. While we do not believe in regional units as defined in the 1998 Act for the purposes of an elected region, it is abundantly clear that few electors even know what they are. Amendment No. 7 would require the Government to explain to electors at the time of a referendum what is encompassed by a region's boundaries and where they are defined at the beginning, outside and end. I beg to move.

Lord Stoddart of Swindon: I am sorry to be a nuisance but my noble friend the Minister—together with two others—caused me a lot of nuisance in another place in respect of the 1977 Finance Bill, so I will take a little revenge.
	This is possibly the last time that I will be able to raise a point about regional boundaries, which are of concern in relation to the European Union. My noble friend has not yet been able to convince me and others that there is not a connection. The map of the European Union shows eight regions in what we think of as England but England itself is not mentioned. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are mentioned as nations but not England. People have got the idea, rightly or wrongly, that England is being phased out—that there will be no such place as England. Forty six million people in England think that they are English. It should be made absolutely clear that regionalisation has nothing to do with eliminating England and the English.
	The reason for my suspicion is that a few years ago, when Labour was in opposition, I listened to an interview on "The World at One" with Robin Cook when he was questioned about devolution and a Parliament for Scotland. The interviewer said, "That's all very well, Mr Cook, but what about England?" "England isn't a nation," came the reply, "It's only a collection of regions". That has remained with me ever since. There seems to be a view among some people that England can be divided into a group of regions so that it loses its nationhood, whereas the other countries of the United Kingdom keep theirs.
	I hope that the Minister will understand why there is such great concern among so many people about the Bill. They believe that the tentacles of the octopus of the European Union—as the noble Lord, Lord Pearson of Rannoch, calls it—are about to engulf and squeeze the life out of England and replace it with convenient administrative units to be controlled and governed from Brussels.
	I hope that I have put my remarks in a way that the Minister understands. I hope that many people who are worried on that basis will feel that their concerns have been mentioned and discussed in the place where they should be: Parliament. I hope that the Minister will not brush the matter aside and treat it with jollity, as so often happens, because it is a serious matter that is exercising the minds of many people who, we should not forget, are electors in this country.

Lord Hylton: I apologise for having been unable to attend Second Reading. I speak as one of the few Committee Members who lives in the south-west region. While that region as defined in the White Paper may be moderately suitable for the administrative purposes of central government regional offices, I cannot see that it makes any sense in terms of elected assemblies or better democratic control over the numerous quangos and institutions that presently escape from local government and are inadequately accountable to the national Parliament.
	To have a region extending from Cheltenham via Swindon, Salisbury and Bournemouth down to Land's End is nonsense. There is no community of interest or regional identity in that elongated string of counties. I hope that the Government will think seriously about the matter long before we reach any referendum.

Lord Pearson of Rannoch: When the Minister referred me to the White Paper on our last amendment he encouraged me to refresh my mind on what it says about the involvement of the European Union. I appreciate that he is unable to answer my questions now, but I look forward to it on a later part of the Bill. It seems appropriate at this stage in our deliberations to place on the record a couple of quotes from the White Paper, bearing in mind what the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, said.
	Paragraph 8.19 confirms my fears. It states:
	"The relationship between regions and the EU has been heavily influenced by the desire to obtain Structural Funds assistance. Structural Funds have been the catalyst for strengthened links between the regions and the EU, and"—
	slightly more controversially—
	"are one of the most visible signs on the ground of the benefits of EU membership".
	I repeat that EU funds do not actually exist. They are only the half of what we send through the corrupt filter of Brussels that comes back to us. The White Paper continues:
	"Information on the role of elected regional assemblies in overseeing any structural fund expenditure for future programming periods is set out in chapter 4".
	Paragraph 4.31 confirms my fears. It states:
	"The general approach to EU structural funds in England . . . will continue. However, the assembly will take over the role currently performed by Government Offices on structural funds (including the European Regional Development Fund, the European Social Fund and rural programmes) for any structural fund expenditure for future programming periods. This would mean that the assembly will chair the programme monitoring committee, play a key role in drawing up the single programme documents, and lead in negotiations on these programme documents with the European Commission".
	I trust that the Minister will agree that his White Paper underlines both my fears and the questions I put to him, to which I still hope for an answer some day.

The Earl of Onslow: Will the Minister help me? The Chancellor of the Exchequer wrote in an article in The Times the other day that we need to repatriate all EU regional funding. I have no difficulty in completely agreeing with him. How does that affect the Bill? If they are not going to be funded from Brussels, what is the need for the regions in the first place?

Lord Pearson of Rannoch: In order to help the Minister with my noble friend's rather difficult question, he can get off the hook by pointing out to his right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer that there is no hope of repatriating regional funds to this country. It would require unanimity among all the member states. As we are large contributors it is simply not on the agenda. I do not know why the Chancellor bothered to mention the matter.

Baroness Seccombe: At Second Reading I mentioned the disappearance of England. Speaking to groups of people who feel as strongly as the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart of Swindon, I have been horrified. I support his comment that we forget people at our peril. There are 48 million—I believe he said—electors in this country who feel strongly that the Scottish Parliament, the National Assembly for Wales and the Northern Ireland Assembly have given their people something, but England gets nothing; only division into regions.

Lord Rooker: I stick to what I said this morning but I will answer the amendment. Amendment No. 7 is interesting. I do not want to be cheap by saying that it is a consequence of a new clause that was withdrawn, although I see that a coalition of interests is forming on the Conservative and Liberal Democrat Benches. The noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, opened up a great pit into which the Liberal Democrats are clearly going to jump on Report.
	I turn to the amendment's phrasing:
	"The boundaries of a region subject to a referendum order under subsection (1) will be specified by the Secretary of State".
	I am pleased to announce that they already have been specified. The amendment does not say where they shall be specified: it does not say in the Bill or anywhere else. But they have been specified ad nauseam. They have even been specified in visual form in maps in the infamous White Paper. One only has to look at pages 70 to 77 to see maps of every region designated by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State.

Lord Hanningfield: Will the Minister accept that there is a mistake? The White Paper is supposed to be accurate, but it says that the eastern region has 20 unitaries. It has only four unitaries. If we cannot get that right, what can we get right? There are mistakes in the White Paper. The maps the Minister described are not right.

Lord Rooker: No, I believe that the maps are right. No one is arguing that the maps are wrong. On such detail, I cannot tell the noble Lord off the top of my head how many unitaries there are in each region. I accept the expertise of the noble Lord—that is one of the beauties of this place: if he says that there are four unitaries, there are four unitaries and there is a mistake. That does not alter the fact that the boundaries have been designated; they are blocks of county councils, are they not? That is how the regions are formed. No boundary crosses through the middle of a county council, so far as I am aware. They are the building blocks for the regions—the counties. They have been designated by the Secretary of State.
	In the spirit of wishing to make progress—I assume that someone does; I certainly do—I say that the spirit of Amendment No. 7 has been met by the Secretary of State, who has nothing further to do. When the referendum comes, the same will apply as applies to every election in this country. I cannot discuss parish councils because I have no experience of them, but in ward, council and parliamentary elections, people swear blind afterwards that they have voted for you, but you know that they are not in your constituency. Others say, "I did not know that I lived in this ward until a polling card came through the door". I hate to mention the European parliamentary elections, which operate on a regional basis, but the same issue arises.
	We will publish full information about the powers and duties of the regions if and when we go for a referendum. I assure Members of the Committee that because not the whole country will be involved—I believe that I can safely say that—the region or regions in which there are referendums will certainly know that there is an election. The spirit of Amendment No. 7 has been met absolutely and completely by my right honourable friend.

Baroness Blatch: I do not understand; perhaps I may press the Minister further. I believe that he has fallen into the hole created by my noble friend Lord Waddington. My noble friend said forcefully—I believe that it pleased the Minister—that when the Minister says something, he means it; that is what is going to happen and we all know it. The noble Lord said what the shape of the Bill will be when it has completed its passage through Parliament. If the Bill is unchanged in any way, and if Amendment No. 1—or Amendment No. 4 of the Liberals—is not agreed to, everything that the Minister said is absolutely right. However, we are at the start of a process in this House. It is always possible that the Bill will be rather different when it goes to another place. That is a possibility because we are part of the parliamentary process. If that is the case, Amendment No. 7 comes into its own. It will be pertinent to the Secretary of State, who will have to inform the relevant area of the country that, unlike the shape of the map in the White Paper, the situation in practice could be rather different.

The Earl of Caithness: The Minister is absolutely right to say that the maps have been put forward in the White Paper. However, as my noble friend Lady Hanham said, there are very few people outside this Chamber and outside local government who have actually read it. My question to the Minister is: how is the Secretary of State going to make certain that all those who are involved in a referendum know the full extent of the boundary and of what will happen?
	I return to the boundary of the South East area, which I know well. How will the Secretary of State ensure that the people who vote in the boundary area know that the South East region goes right round to Margate? That question relates to this amendment.
	While I am on my feet, will the Minister at some stage answer my question about functions in relation to Amendment No. 2, to which he has not yet replied? That is crucial to our future consideration of the Bill. Perhaps he could do so some time later today.

Lord Stoddart of Swindon: Is the Minister going to reply to or—perhaps I should put it this way—is he able to reply to the points raised by the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, and myself about the implications of the Bill in relation to the European Union?

Lord Rooker: I apologise to noble Lords. It may be my fault, but I am working from this publication, Your Region, Your Choice, which was published recently and provided to all known people who received the White Paper. It contained some updates and took account of the reorganisation of local government in May 2002 and the change of responsibilities in the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister. An opportunity was also taken to correct a misprint. The document that I am looking at does not have the figures quoted by the noble Lord, although the original publication does. However, I am assured that the maps are all correct. Thank heaven for that.
	I turn to the points raised by the noble Earl, Lord Caithness. We said that we will issue a statement to voters before the referendum that will set out the points that I have already mentioned. At the risk of repeating myself, they will include the powers and how the assembly will work. We will also make clear in that statement the boundaries of the region. There will not be any misapprehension about that important point.
	I turn to the point of principle raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Blatch. I do not wish to fall foul of that. Everything that I say about the Bill is predicated on the basis that we are a Parliament and can change the Bill. That is what scrutiny is all about; I absolutely accept that. I go so far as to say that although the soundings exercise closed on 3rd March, the fact is that this House will spend several days giving views—party views and individual views. I do not know whether another place will do likewise; it depends on what happens here. I assure noble Lords that those views will be listened to. In other words, although the soundings closed before we started our scrutiny of the Bill, that does not mean that what anyone says in this House is ignored; that is, "You are too late, you did not speak up". That is fundamental. I absolutely accept what the noble Baroness, Lady Blatch, said about that. The Bill could change and if it did there would have to be consequential amendments to take account of that.

Lord Stoddart of Swindon: Do I take it that because the Minister has not replied to the points raised by the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, and myself, he is unwilling to give any answer to them, or does not wish to do so?

Lord Rooker: No. I rest my case on what I said and my references to the White Paper. I cannot go beyond what is in the White Paper regarding any of the questions that were raised about the council of the regions, the Chancellor's article—which I have not read—the European Union or regional offices. Either something is in the White Paper or the Government have not yet pronounced on it. If we do so in due course, we shall let the House know.

Baroness Hanham: I thank the Minister for his various replies. I refer to Clause 1, which is about the order that must be laid by the Secretary of State in order to cause a referendum. My amendment refers to that order. The amendment is all about the information that is available to the public at any given time. We keep on assuming that the electorate are in a fever about the Bill and are listening with bated breath all of the time to what we are saying. I have a more cynical disposition; that is, I believe that the electorate do not know about this and that it will never do them any harm to give them as much information as they need.
	My amendment would not do what the Minister suggested. It states that within the orders that we know the Secretary of State must produce he must delineate the boundaries of the regions. I do not mind whether that is for the first or the umpteenth time, whether that involves an amendment of the boundaries, as my noble friend Lord Hanningfield said, or whether it involves those boundaries that are already in the White Paper or the White Paper as amended by the latest publication. When people vote in a referendum, the regions in which they live must be known. When the Secretary of State lays the provisions for that referendum, he should ensure that those boundaries are stated. That is what the amendment would do.

Baroness Hamwee: I am sorry to intervene at this point. I accept that the noble Baroness has tabled an amendment to Clause 26. Although I by no means decry the points that she made about information being available, is it not the case that Clause 26 specifies the regions in the same words as were presented to Parliament by the Deputy Prime Minister, who is also known as the Secretary of State? I am putting slightly differently what the Minister said, but he has specified the regions in the legislation.

Baroness Hanham: He has not done that yet, and he has not specified the boundaries of the regions. Where are the pictures, maps and people? I believe they are necessary, and I wish to test the opinion of the Committee.

On Question, Whether the said amendment (No. 7) shall be agreed to?
	Their Lordships divided: Contents, 63; Not-Contents, 114.

Resolved in the negative, and amendment disagreed to accordingly.

Baroness Hamwee: moved Amendment No. 8:
	Page 1, line 10, leave out "each of the following two conditions" and insert "the condition"

Baroness Hamwee: I shall speak also to Amendments Nos. 11, 16 and 19. Amendment No. 16, which is the main amendment in the group, would delete Clause 1(5), which contains the condition that the Boundary Committee for England must have made recommendations under Section 12 on reviewing the local government structure.
	These are by no means the totality of our amendments on local government and restructuring. I appreciate that Amendment No. 16 cannot make sense without taking out Clause 12 as well. I hope that the Minister will not rely on that technical point.
	We want to decouple the establishment of regional government from consideration of the proper structure of local government. Regional government and local government are linked—and both are linked with national government, although we have heard no proposals to alter the structure of that.
	I profoundly disagree with the Government's view that there is a natural limit to the number of tiers of government that are proper. Perhaps tiers is the wrong word. At the risk of extending the debate again into European issues, I shall use the term that is more commonly used elsewhere in Europe—spheres. Local government is not of subsidiary importance to regional or national government, nor is regional government subsidiary to central government. They all have their proper areas of work. It is not automatic that the more spheres—or, if you will, tiers—there are, the worse it is.
	On Second Reading, the Minister said:
	"the reason we do not want that extra tier may not be logical, but political".—[Official Report, 20/2/02; col. 1332.]
	We all know how straight and honest the Minister is. That was an entirely straight point. However, it does not begin to address the merits or demerits of the issue. It seems to assume that the more tiers, or spheres, there are, the more bureaucracy there is. I accept that more bureaucracy without better government being delivered would be a failure, but I do not accept that that is the natural outcome of having more tiers, or spheres.
	The passion that was expressed on Second Reading about the restructuring of local government tended to be caused by the proposed loss of the counties. As we have just heard, the counties are the building blocks of the regions—building blocks that are then to be taken away from the building, which is a new concept.
	There is also passion for districts, where there is local information, local knowledge, and, not to put too fine a point on it, local gut instinct about what is right for the district. We have heard a lot of noise from the Government about it not being appropriate for there to be more than two tiers of government—other than central government. I am resisting the temptation to talk about two tiers of local government, because regional government is not local government. However, we have heard no real explanation of the merit of the proposal, or even of the thinking that underpins it, other than that no one will stand for it. I beg to move.

Lord Waddington: As the Committee has heard, Amendment No. 16 would enable a referendum to go ahead without the voters being told that if they vote yes they will get unitary government. We have heard that the Liberal Party is in favour of a third tier of government in those parts of the country where there are currently county councils. I am glad that the Liberals say that frankly. I am not in favour of more government.
	I do not want unitary authorities in Lancashire. Unitary local government in Lancashire would very likely mean three local authorities centred on big towns. Each of those authorities would be dominated by urban interests, with the interests of the country dweller and the people living in small towns being ignored. I do not want unitary authorities to take the place of Lancashire County Council.
	Neither do I want regional government. I want the present local government structure to remain, which means local government as near to the people as possible and excellent small local authorities, such as Ribble Valley, continuing to flourish.
	The Bill is a disgrace, because it will mean local government further from the people as the price that has to be paid for regional assemblies with nothing to do. There could not be a bigger scandal than that. I therefore oppose the amendments, because they would make it easier for the Government to achieve their aim of foisting pointless regional government on us. With the Bill as drafted, I hope that the proposals for local government change will make plenty of people in Lancashire wake up to what is going on and think furiously before being daft enough to vote for a regional assembly.

The Earl of Onslow: I completely agree with my noble friend Lord Waddington. I am privileged enough, I think, in the event of riot to command the militia in Guildford. Luckily for the good burgesses of Guildford, Denis Healey disbanded the local militia battalions, so I am out of a job.
	There are distinct differences between Guildford and Surrey. Long may they remain and long may they both be distinct. We do not want to be part of the South East region. That is a bad idea. The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, referred to spheres. There is another word for spheres, and that is balls. It is unfortunate that the Government are trying to reintroduce heptarchy by the back door. That should not be done and I shall do anything I can to slow it down or turn it spherical.

Baroness Blatch: We are discussing the Bill in two ways. First, we are going through the normal parliamentary process. The endgame that we would like would clearly be contrary to the Government's manifesto. This House loyally always honours the Government of the day. We therefore take the second tack. If this Bill, in its present form or in a modified form, is to be enacted, we would like certain things to be considered to make it work in a way that we would prefer.
	I am baffled by these amendments because the noble Baroness has insisted that there should be only one condition, that the Secretary of State considers the level of interest in the region—end of story. If the Government are to go ahead with this in the way that they wish, I would like the number of conditions to be increased. Subsection (5) states:
	"The second condition is that the Boundary Committee for England have made recommendations in relation to the region in pursuance of section 12".
	At least what will be Section 12 puts some detail on the conditions that the Government would be obliged to meet.
	The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, has put her name to a raft of amendments to Clause 12, although she ends by opposing the Question that Clause 12 stand part of the Bill. The noble Baroness appears to be arguing for unconditional regional government: "Let us have regional government and not worry too much about the nature of it". I entirely agree with my noble friend Lord Waddington that if this measure is to go ahead, I would like the issue of the boundaries revisited. We would also want to ensure that regional government works in a way that is consistent, as much as possible, with the wishes of local people.

Lord Greaves: My noble friend and myself are quite surprised by the reaction to these amendments from the Conservative Benches. We thought that this was an issue on which we might agree. I shall explain why. It may be the amendments that we have tabled are not well drafted, although they are simple; and it may be that noble Lords on the Conservative Benches have not understood our intentions.
	We want to decouple the issue of the reorganisation of local government from the issue of whether there should be a regional assembly. The Government are saying that in order to have a regional assembly there has to be local government reorganisation whether one likes it or not. We say that those are two separate issues and that they should be dealt with separately; they should be decided upon separately by local people.
	In the North East, for example, the vote on whether to have a regional assembly will involve everyone in the North East: Northumberland, Durham and the metropolitan areas of Gateshead, Newcastle, North Tyneside, South Tyneside and Sunderland. A vote across the whole of the North East on the two issues—whether to have a regional assembly and whether to reorganise local government in Northumberland and Durham only—may be decided by people in those five metropolitan districts. The decision on what form of local government there will be in Berwick-upon-Tweed, in Alnwick, in Durham or in other parts of County Durham may be made by people who do not live in those places. That appears to be fundamentally undemocratic.
	The Government may be right and it may be sensible to go to a system of unitary local government in those areas if there is a regional assembly. There is an arguable case—maybe an overwhelming case—for that, but on democratic grounds that should be decided by the people who live in those counties and not by those who do not live there. Therefore, we are seeking to decouple the two issues. The reason for seeking to delete subsection (5) is to restrict the referendum on regional government to regional government. After the regional assembly has been elected, if it is thought necessary there could be a review of local government, but it should be down to the people who live there.
	The noble Lord, Lord Waddington, does not want to see any changes in Lancashire—and that may be what happens. The good people of Lancashire may well agree with him. Lancashire County Council certainly agrees with him to the extent that the Labour Party in the region is tearing itself apart. Lancashire County Council has resigned from the existing regional assembly. There is talk of Cheshire following, but I have no idea whether that is true or not. However, Lancashire has voted to do that. Already a certain amount of mayhem is being caused by the proposals and the arguments are taking place among people in the Labour Party.
	The purpose of the amendment is to decouple the conditions. It may not be the perfect amendment; it may not be exactly the right way to do it. Indeed, my noble friend and I have tabled further amendments on this and my noble friend has said that we would like to remove Clause 12 altogether because it creates the mechanisms for the reorganisation of local government. In our view it does not belong in the Bill. Whether or not the interpretation of what we are doing is as noble Lords on the Conservative Benches have said or whether it is our interpretation, the intention is clear: it is to decouple the two conditions. I hope that later we can find common cause on that.
	It is extraordinary that the only arguments that the Minister has so far put forward are practical, political arguments: if we do not do this, the Bill will not go through. Perhaps the Sun newspaper or the Daily Mail runs government policy nowadays. It sometimes looks like that in many areas, but I hope that in this area that is not the case. Winning the referendum is crucial. Unless this matter is decoupled, I do not believe that you can win a referendum in the North West. I believe it is the other way around.

Lord Rooker: If this measure is decoupled, there will not be a referendum because there will not be a Bill. We shall take it away. That is the price to be paid. It is as simple as that. I do not think that the noble Lord has understood how serious this is: decouple and we shall not proceed. If you want to kill the Bill, carry on.

Lord Hanningfield: I do not necessarily agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, has said, but surely it cannot be possible for Manchester and Merseyside to out-vote Lancashire, Cumbria and the other counties and create a regional assembly against the will of that great geographical area which does not want one. There must be some way to allow people to vote differently so that those great counties of Lancashire, Cheshire, Staffordshire and Cumbria do not have to be dominated by an urban unitary area that could out-vote them. Surely that would be against natural justice and the way in which democracy should work in this country.

Lord Greaves: We now have threats, bluster and blackmail from the Minister—not rational argument: "You decouple and we will withdraw the Bill. We will take our bat and ball home".

The Earl of Onslow: That is an excellent idea. Do let us decouple and take away your bat and spear!

Lord Greaves: Sometimes one finds Members walking through the same Lobby as oneself but for rather different reasons. That is politics!
	The Minister's attitude is not acceptable. I do not believe that it is his personal attitude, but he has his instructions. We are being threatened that if we do what we believe is right, the Government will take their bat and ball home. If it comes to that, do not blame us. The responsibility would clearly rest with the Government. It is arrogance of the highest order for the Government of this country, elected on 43 per cent of the vote, to believe that the few checks and balances that remain, which by and large rest within your Lordships' House, should not be exercised. We believe that what we are doing is right, but the Government believe that they have some kind of automatic right to have every detail of their legislation.
	I do not know why the Government take that view. As my noble friend Lord Shutt and I pointed out at Second Reading, the Labour manifesto at the last general election, Ambitions for Britain, said that,
	"provision should be made for directly elected regional government"—
	I am unsure why it uses the word "directly", which apparently does not mean anything—
	"to go ahead in regions where people decided in a referendum to support it"—
	I support that. The Government are entitled to that legislation—
	"and where predominantly unitary local government is established".
	We had a discussion with the noble Lord, Lord Waddington, at Second Reading about what "predominantly" meant and which regions it might apply to.
	But it is clear that the policy on which the Government were elected was not that 100 per cent unitary government would be mandatory in places holding referendums on regional government. At the last general election, the Labour Party went to the country with the policy that there had to be predominantly unitary local government. At some stage since then, a smarted-suited young researcher or policy adviser, or perhaps the Prime Minister, came up with the idea that all government must be unitary. If one listens to the rumours and spin and reads the newspapers, it came from 10 Downing Street because people started to panic about the threat of more tiers and what the Daily Mail would say. The policy was changed.
	Now the Minister in this House brow-beats us—it is the only way in which it can described—that if we vote against him, he will withdraw his legislation. If he wants the legislation, he will have to bend a little. The Liberal Democrats will not be brow-beaten in every instance. If he is saying that if your Lordships' House stands firm on such issues he will not get his legislation, then we might as well all pack up and go home.

Baroness Blatch: I wish to correct an impression that I may have created in how I spoke to the amendment. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, that we should not be threatened by the Minister when he says that this would wreck the Bill. There are two questions: one on the organisation and the other on whether we have regional assemblies.
	My concern is that it is wrong to base the question of whether there should be a regional assembly on only one condition—that the level of interest is tested. Amendments Nos. 9, 14, 17, 15, 22 and 23, which are tabled in my name, will add to the number of conditions in Part 1 on referendums.

Lord Greaves: I did not reply specifically to that point because we are talking about the condition relating to a review of local government, which ought to be removed. I am aware that the noble Baroness has tabled some amendments creating other conditions. We will listen with interest to the debate on them and consider them dispassionately.

Baroness Maddock: I wish to make two points. Along with my noble friends, I am shocked at what the Minister has said today. Those of us who believe in democracy cannot really believe that the Minister will do what he says.
	I wish to say more on what the Bill means to Berwick-upon-Tweed, where I live. The people of Berwick will now have to decide either to have devolution from London—with the Scottish Border four miles away and single-lane roads—they feel remote from London and are desperate to have local government that understands what their region needs. But they are not desperate to lose their local borough council. They feel remote from the centre of Northumberland County Council, which is 50 miles away. If they want power from the centre in London, they will have to give up local representation.
	England and the British Isles have far fewer representatives across the board than almost any other country in Europe. Yet people are trying to convince us that we are over-governed and that that is why we cannot have both the system we want and regional government.

Lord Shutt of Greetland: The Bill is supposed to be about bringing real democracy to the regions. I indicated at Second Reading that I was in favour of having unitary local government authorities. Many aspirants to unitary status have not yet achieved it. I wish them well, because local government decisions made near the grassroots are the best ones. But it might not be right everywhere.
	Why should the Bill involve local government? That confuses the issue. The referendum is about whether people want regional government; it should not be about local government. All local government members ought to be able to sleep well in their beds during this referendum. It should not affect them. It is another spoke in the wheel of big local government. The Government are bringing in the issue of local government, but local government members want to be out of the way. It will create a tremendous hurdle to campaigners if the issue is on the back foot to start with because it is loused up by local government reform also.
	The Minister is wrong in not wanting another tier. The tier exists. In Leeds we have the Westminster Government with their pitch in City House and we have all the Yorkshire quangos. The Bill should be about pumping democracy into the existing tier. The business of local government should be dropped from the Bill. The Bill should be a new way of bringing democracy into those decisions that it is appropriate to make at regional level.

Lord Stoddart of Swindon: Usually, by this stage, one gets some clarification of what a Bill is about. The more I have listened to this discussion, the more bewildered I have become. Normally, the Government lay down a policy of government, including local government, administration and so on. But in this situation the localities will decide what sort of administration they have. We might be left with a situation where the North East has a regional assembly but the rest of the country does not.
	I feel sure that the Government are banking on the possibility that, if they can get one region to vote for a regional assembly, there will be a domino effect whereby all the others will say, "if they have an assembly, we must have one as well". But that is by no means certain. So in England—I say England advisedly, because it is England—some regions will have a regional assembly and others will not. I do not know how on earth that will make things better or more democratic.
	The Government say that they wish to devolve powers—we do not know which—and that they believe in devolution. On the other hand, they believe in pushing other services to Brussels. They are counter-devolving some things upwards to Brussels at the same time as they want to devolve other things downwards. As far as I can see, there is no joined-up thinking. No wonder local authorities do not know which way they are going. They are bewildered by what is happening and wonder what the Government's policy is.
	I fear that, instead of achieving clarity, we will be just as bewildered at the end of the Bill's passage as we were at the start, if not more so.

Lord Rooker: I must make it absolutely clear that I have said nothing today that I did not say at Second Reading. I do not want to sugar-coat things. I do not want there to be any misunderstanding.
	What we are discussing is the guts of the Bill. If we remove that second plank, the Bill is gone. That is the significance. I am not threatening the Committee—I would not be so stupid—but I am explaining the consequences of removing the guts of the Bill. We have made it clear from day one that the principal point is that regional assemblies in areas in which people have chosen to have them, on the basis of the information that we will supply, will operate on the basis of unitary local government.
	There may be arguments about the wording in the manifesto. Not having fought the previous election, I did not read the manifesto as closely as I should have done, although I campaigned for my colleagues, needless to say. The White Paper is the mechanism for turning a manifesto commitment into practical policy. We can dissect the words in the manifesto, as we have done in both Houses. Ideas are put together that must then be converted into practical solutions and policies that work. Following the discussions that we had in government, the White Paper is the way of converting that commitment into practical policy.

Baroness Blatch: I believe the noble Lord and his colleagues in another place when they say that power is being devolved from national government to regional assemblies and bringing democracy to what is already there in the regions. However, if it is true that powers are not being taken from the bottom—the districts and the counties—upwards, why should it affect the counties or the districts at all?
	It is possible for the Government to achieve their political objective, if they mean what they say. I do not doubt the noble Lord's word, but I think that the White Paper does not say the same. The White Paper cedes nothing from national government and will take a good deal of powers from local government. The hidden agenda seems to be the reorganisation of local government, not the devolution of power from national government.

Lord Rooker: Whether noble Lords believe me or not, no statutory powers that local government exercises at the moment will be removed to the regional assemblies. Local government can sleep easily, as the noble Lord, Lord Shutt of Greetland, put it.

Lord Hanningfield: We are about to receive the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Bill, which will move virtually all planning powers from the county councils and some from the district councils to the regional assemblies. The noble Lord must acknowledge that some powers are being moved from local government to regional assemblies.

Lord Rooker: That is not a consequence of this Bill. That is not double-speak. The powers in the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Bill, which we will debate when it arrives here—it has not yet finished its passage through another place—will operate whether or not there are elected regional assemblies. That structure will stand the test of time with or without elected regional assemblies; one is not necessarily linked to the other. Planning authorities at district council level will be responsible for the control of development. There is no change there. I am not here to discuss that Bill, and those changes are not a consequence of this Bill.
	The Planning and Compulsory Purchase Bill will stand whether or not this Bill is on the statute book. The changes will happen whether or not there are elected regional assemblies.

The Earl of Onslow: I search genuinely for information. Why is it essential that local authorities—some unitary, some county and district—should be unified to create a district that will have something totally different to do? How will the Bill affect the powers and duties of local authorities? I do not understand.
	I can see that if, as my noble friend Lady Blatch said, the Government were taking something away, there might be a need for an imposed unitary authority. If Alnwick wants to run things one way, Guildford another way and Scunthorpe a third way, why should not they be allowed to do so? According to the Government, their powers will not be affected by this Bill.

Lord Rooker: It is interesting to see how noble Lords dismiss the argument about whether tiers of government matter. We think that they do, which is why we are having no new tiers of government. The mantra will continue to be, "We are not having new tiers of government".

Lord Greaves: The Minister has—

Lord Rooker: I must finish the point. I am not going home or anything.
	If we are to get a good working relationship with local government in whatever form at the level of a district council or, on the odd occasion, of a county council—I think that there is only one unitary county council, and I cannot pre-judge what might come out of the boundary review—we need to streamline the local authority structure. We might be wrong, but that is our view. The way to do it is to have a unitary structure.
	As we have made clear, no existing unitary authority will have its boundaries interfered with. There will not be wholesale review and change; that would be change for change's sake. It is only in areas in which the structure is two-tier that we need to consider which way to go to make a unitary authority. There are many different ways of doing that. We are not pre-judging what the Boundary Committee could do; it could recommend a unitary structure for current two-tier areas based on counties, districts or something different. That is up to the Boundary Committee, and we will assess the proposals, when they are published.

Lord Greaves: The Minister has again asserted that there cannot be an extra tier. He has not yet provided any arguments to support that assertion. Simply asserting something time and time again does not make it a better argument.
	We need to understand why an extra tier would be so bad. If, as has been stated, no powers will come up from local government and there will be no change to the position of local government, what extra costs will be incurred by maintaining the status quo?

Lord Rooker: I am just asserting government policy. That is the point. We are entitled to have a policy, and the policy is "No new extra tiers of government". That is a policy, not an assertion.

Lord Greaves: The Government are entitled to have a policy, and we are entitled to question them on that policy and find out the reasons that lie behind it. If the Minister refuses to give the reasons, we are all wasting our time.

Lord Rooker: We are not. One would not know where to stop. I have been involved with local government reorganisations in the past as a constituency Member of Parliament. There is an idea that the bureaucracy level would stay the same; that decision-making would be streamlined; that it would be cheaper; and that people would have a better relationship with different tiers of government and fully understand who is delivering what service. Tiers could be added ad infinitum.
	Perhaps I may finish answering the question asked by the noble Lord. The Government have taken the view that a unitary tier underneath a regional tier—I do not like the term hierarchical—is efficient and can be streamlined and meaningful to communities. Local authorities can be the champions of their communities in this respect, as well as speaking with one voice. An area that is unitary would not have two organisations speaking to government or to the regional assembly, as happens at present. Therefore, there would be clarity of purpose and transparency. That is an important point.
	Members of the Committee have spoken about the ordinary voters—our masters—not understanding what is happening. If we want them to understand, we need clarity and simplicity in our government structures. Adding more tiers of government is not the way to do that. The noble Lord may not like it, but that is the plain fact of the matter.

Lord Greaves: I am grateful for the patience of the Minister. In starting that reply, he has pointed out that reorganisation is what costs the extra money in local government. It is not a question of how many tiers; it is a question of reorganisation. It is the Government who are proposing to reorganise government in these areas with all the extra costs—I agree with him entirely—that will accrue. Why will maintaining the status quo cost an extra penny?

Lord Hanningfield: I should like to add to the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Greaves. Independent work by the Audit Commission and the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy (CIPFA) suggests that turning England into a unitary organisation would cost well over £1 billion. That cost would be for just the reorganisation of local government—money that could be spent on schools and hospitals—to achieve nothing.
	Setting up regional government and the regions would be much cheaper. The method proposed by the Government is by far the most expensive, as plenty of independent evidence will show. It could be done much more cheaply by creating regional assemblies above the existing local government.

Lord Rooker: I do not know anything about the CIPFA research—

Baroness Blatch: I am grateful to the Minister because my point dovetails with those being discussed. The Government cannot have it both ways. If the Government are genuinely making a case for regional assemblies—and that is what they must do in order to ask Parliament to agree to the Bill—the argument being put forward is that power from the national level will be ceded to the regions and democracy will be brought to existing bodies in those regions. No powers will move from local government to the regional assemblies.
	If we have to accept that as an argument—and that is the argument being put forward by the Government—there is no case for the reorganisation of local government because it is doing now what the Government say that it will be doing post the introduction of regional assemblies. At Second Reading, the Minister promised me that we would know the cost of the abolition of a large number of councils around the country. It would be helpful to have that figure. Why should the councils be abolished gratuitously to introduce regional assemblies when the case put forward by the Government is about ceding powers from national government to regional assemblies and simply making sense of the bodies that already exist in the regions?

Lord Rooker: I do not think that the Government could make a case—I certainly could not make a case—for another tier of elected people in addition to those that we have already. I cannot make that case, whatever information I am given. I could not make a solid case for saying that we should have elected assembly "people"—namely, councillors, or whatever their title may be—in addition to those we have already. In two-tier areas with districts and counties, I would not be able to make a case for saying to people that in addition to electing Members for the UK Parliament and the European Parliament, they will have to elect yet more people.
	As regards the point concerning CIPFA, the Government do not have a plan for local government reorganisation. Period. There is no plan.

Noble Lords: Oh!

Lord Rooker: No, no, our plan is for elected regional assemblies. Perhaps I may finish my point. If the Government had a plan for local government reorganisation, there would have been an inquiry and a report that would have dealt with the whole of England.
	The noble Lord, Lord Hanningfield, referred to the work being done by CIPFA. We do not have a plan for local government reorganisation in England. We have a plan for elected regional assemblies in areas where people choose in the referendum to have them. We clearly indicate that it will not be "big bang". That is the implication of the Bill. The whole country would not have regional assemblies at the same time—if ever.
	We do not have a plan and therefore the issue does not arise. It is true that the manner in which we propose setting up and running elected regional assemblies, based on unitary local authorities, has a consequence for partial local government reorganisation in those areas which currently have two tiers. Our view is that regional assemblies will work only with a single tier. I do not call that a plan for local government reform.

The Earl of Onslow: What the Minister is saying is that we have an "accident" for local government reform. In other words, it may happen or it may not. The Government do not know whether they are coming or going. They are suggesting that we may have local government reform or we may have a local authority here or a local authority there. That is not grown-up thinking. It is like having a little pen with round balls on string to play with. I am sorry; I am flabbergasted.

Baroness Hanham: The Minister can have a go at two of us at the same time. I take issue with the Minister on his description of the local government review as being a partial local government reorganisation. The Minister will recall previous local government reorganisations. This is major. The Government will have to go to the electorate in a region and say, "Okay, now you are going to vote whether you want a county council or a unitary authority. What size do you want your unitary authority to be? In fact, your very loved town hall up the road is to be amalgamated with your deeply unloved town hall in the unitary district next door—the people with whom you have been fighting for donkeys years—because you will be amalgamated with them in a new unitary authority".
	My understanding of the Boundary Committee is that it would be asked to form unitaries from the counties, councils or whatever else. However, as I understand it, there is a rider which is that they can review all the unitaries to ensure that they make sense. Therefore, not only the unitary authorities within the two-tier system would be reviewed to ensure that they make sense; the Boundary Committee would have the right to review them all. That is not a partial reorganisation; it is a major reorganisation of local government. I would hate the Minister to think that it was anything but that. This is "big-bug" stuff. There will be considerable opposition—and not just from this House.

Lord Rooker: I return to what I said at Second Reading. I know I made the statement based on advice. Where there is an existing unitary authority in a region, it will not have its boundaries interfered with as a result of this Bill. If I am wrong, I shall be told and I shall report back to the Committee. I repeat that because that is my understanding. It is what I said at Second Reading.
	In some regions there are a lot of unitary authorities. They will not be interfered with. Their boundaries will not change. The review will take place in areas where there are two tiers to make them into one tier. However, there is more than one way of making the two into one, using a different formula.
	That will be the decision of the Boundary Committee. I do not want to prejudge. We have published draft advice to the Boundary Committee on the way in which that will operate.

Lord Waddington: The difficulty of the Government's case is that the Boundary Committee will not be a free agent. The Government are not asking the Boundary Committee to recommend what it believes would be the best system of local government. They are saying to the Boundary Committee that it may not advise the Government as to what it thinks is the best system of local government in, say, Lancashire. A unitary system must be decided.
	If that is the case—and it clearly is the case under the Bill—the Government must take responsibility. They must tell us why they believe that in, say, Lancashire, it would be better for the citizens who now live in the county area to have a unitary authority rather than the existing county council. The Government have a duty to tell us why they believe that that would be better for the citizens.

Lord Rooker: At an appropriate time after the Boundary Committee has reported, in due course—my understanding is that it will take about a year to complete the review in a region—at the time of the referendum, the Government will put forward their views about the Boundary Committee's review. So we shall do exactly as the noble Lord says.
	I do not know what the Boundary Committee will propose—

Lord Waddington: The Minister cannot be understanding me. The point is that, by that stage, the Government, as a result of their own policy, will have brought about unitary authorities—because they are telling the Boundary Committee that it must advise on the basis of there being unitary authorities. Therefore, the Government must tell us now—not when there is a referendum—why they believe that it will be good for the citizens of county areas such as Lancashire to have unitary authorities thrust upon them, rather than keeping the existing county council. It is as simple as that.

Lord Rooker: When we published the White Paper we gave it the title Your Region, Your Choice—a mistake, I suppose, so far as concerns the noble Earl, Lord Onslow, who cannot understand it. This is not a question of the Government coming to Parliament with a ready-made, bolted-down system of elected regional assemblies, and with all the answers to all the questions.

The Earl of Onslow: Perhaps I may—

Lord Rooker: Please let me finish. It is not possible to keep raising parallel questions; then I shall be accused later of not answering them.
	We take credit for not having a ready-made plan. We want people in the areas to choose, on the basis of the framework set out in the Bill—that is, unitary local government as part of the package on which they will be asked to vote. There will be a big debate. Whether they choose to opt for local government changes as a price to be paid for having an elected regional assembly is a decision for the electors of the regions. They will only make that choice on the basis of all the necessary information, after a review has taken place, after the Boundary Committee has published its views and after the Government have given their views about the way forward based on the Boundary Committee's suggestions.

The Earl of Onslow: I should like to return to the question of Alnwick or Berwick district council, in a large regional area. If people in Wearside vote for a regional assembly, if the whole of Northumberland votes for a regional assembly, they vote to extinguish Alnwick and Berwick. That is why the Government are not offering a choice. They are saying: you will extinguish Alnwick and Berwick if you go for regional authorities. That is why it is wrong to say that the Government have no plan. The Government have a very clear plan. They are saying: you will have unitary local authorities and regional assemblies; you cannot have what you have at the moment, with a small amount of regional authority on top. If the Government have to recreate the Heptarchy brought into being by Ethelred the Unready, they should at least keep some of the counties that were created to replace it.

Lord Shutt of Greetland: I think it is worse than that. Let us take the example of Skipton, in North Yorkshire. The Boundary Committee may come up with the proposal that there should be a small Skipton unitary authority. On the other hand, it may say, no, Skipton and Harrogate should be amalgamated into a new unitary authority. The possibility of Skipton being placed with Bradford, which is a unitary authority, would not be available.
	In 1973, Skipton was part of the West Riding county council, which looked to Wakefield. Bradford is nearer to Skipton than Wakefield. It is not impossible that that might be a way forward, and one which the people of Skipton would desire. But the Minister is suggesting—because the unitary boundaries will never under any circumstances be changed from the existing ones—that that would not be an option.

Lord Rooker: On the basis that I have not received any advice contradicting what I said earlier, the noble Lord, Lord Shutt, is right. That is the point of the exercise. We are not looking for a wholesale local government reorganisation as a consequence of the Bill—merely to convert to unitary authorities where there is presently two-tier government.
	Perhaps I may return to the question raised by the noble Lord, Lord Waddington. The Government are not in a position to implement any recommendation that the Boundary Committee may make for local government unless there is a referendum giving a positive result. As we have already said—this has been placed on record—there is a difficulty, and I understand people's suspicion about this. Before the referendum the Boundary Committee will have published its views for local government changes in an area, partial or otherwise. The Government will pronounce on whether they are content with those proposals, and that will be part of the information. If a referendum takes place and the result is "No", the plans of the Boundary Committee for local government in that area will not proceed. I want to make that absolutely clear. This is not a Trojan horse to bring about local government reorganisation. The Boundary Committee will put forward a plan as to how an area might work; but it will be taken forward only if there is a "Yes" vote in a referendum. If there is a "No" vote, we shall not proceed with the review. The county authorities and district authorities will stay as they are.
	It cannot be clearer or fairer than that. We are not misleading people. It is consistent with the fact that we have no hidden plan for a local government review by proxy, for another reason. It is purely a consequence of choosing to vote on whether to have an elected regional assembly. If there is a "No" vote in a referendum, there will be no regional assembly; therefore, there will be no local government reorganisation.

Lord Hanningfield: I do not think that the Minister has a clue as to what local government reorganisation is like. Having been through this process in the 1990s, we can see this happening in Lancashire very clearly. Lancashire has pulled out of the North West regional assembly, but there is a great deal of fighting—mainly between people in the same parties. Fortunately, in Lancashire, it is now the Labour Party that is tearing itself apart; in the 1990s it was mainly the Conservative Party that was tearing itself apart.
	The anguish will occur during the planning for local government reorganisation. We have gone through a great deal of anguish in Lancashire, with people fighting each other, and virtually hating each other, because of the unitary precedent or keeping Lancashire County Council. Then, we believe, the North West will probably vote "No". So we shall have to go through all the anguish of reorganisation, and then there will be no region anyway. Services will have been destroyed during that time. In local government we are supposed to be caring for the elderly and running the schools, not fighting each other all the time. The Government will create wars all round the country, and then possibly have no regions. I do not think that the Minister understands government reorganisation. It is a very bitter experience for those in the middle of it.

Lord Rooker: Local government reorganisation will not take place unless there is a "Yes" vote in a referendum.

Lord Hanningfield: But I am talking about the planning stage. Let us say that the Deputy Prime Minister announces a referendum for the North West. Then, there will be a year's planning. The in-fighting and difficulty will go on during the year prior to the referendum. People will be fighting each other to establish a unitary precedent or to keep Lancashire County Council. It is already happening. The problem is occurring at this moment, as we are debating these matters. It will happen during that year. So the Government are creating problems that could last for many years and destroy some of the services that local government is providing.

Lord Rooker: I do not accept that. The one thing that I am trying to avoid is answering specific questions about specific places, some of which I have heard of and know where they are. But I do not always know whether they are unitary or not. So I do not want to fall into the trap of commenting on particular areas.
	This will not happen overnight. This is not the Big Bang. On the basis of the soundings, the Deputy Prime Minister may agree that a region or regions should proceed to a referendum; but the Boundary Committee will then be asked to carry out a review, which, as I have said, will take a year to complete. There will then be a gap before the referendum is organised. Let us say that there is a "Yes" vote. Nothing can happen until Parliament has passed a completely separate Bill setting up the regional assembly, with all the rules that will be required. Therefore, it is not a five-minute process. But there are enough quality people in local government to ensure that professional services are maintained. There might be political warfare and people jockeying for position but, given the checks and balances that exist through the Audit Commission and other local government assessments, I cannot possibly see how services could collapse in the way that is suggested. I do not accept for one minute that that would be permitted.

Lord Waddington: We have been all the way round the houses but is it fair to suggest that the Government are saying that in county areas a unitary authority structure is the price the people living there will have to pay if they want regional government, whether the Government of this country think that unitary government in that area is right or wrong for the people in that area? That puts it fairly, does it not?

Lord Rooker: I am tempted to say yes, but I qualify that given the noble Lord's final few words. I sensed a bear trap in the final few words. I have made clear— I cannot make it clearer—that unitary local government—in what shape I do not know, as the Boundary Committee will have to review it—is the political price to be paid for having elected regional assemblies. That is the Government's policy on which the Bill is based. It is not based on anything else at all. Without the one, the other cannot take place. I made that clear when I began to read what I thought would be a two-minute speech. The relevant brief has three paragraphs and is straightforward. We believe that the local government review of the regions should be carried out before the referendum so that voters are informed of the implications of a yes vote. It is important that they are informed of the implications of a yes vote.

Baroness Blatch: This is a terribly important debate. The Minister unwittingly just blew the lid on the Government. If his brief contains three paragraphs to address this particular aspect of the Bill, the Government have totally misread the importance of it. I cannot believe that the noble Lord is as naie as he appears. He refers to a year's work on the part of the Boundary Committee in considering different options for a region such as amalgamating shire districts or getting rid of county councils. There is not one area in the country—I shall not discuss specific areas—that does not have a number of county councils and a much larger number of shire districts.
	The Government say that they have no plans for reorganising local government. We know that they have no specific plans as they have passed the buck to the Boundary Committee. Whether the people vote yes or no, the work of dividing and ruling people at a local level—which we think is absolutely unnecessary if the Government simply want to devolve a bit of power from central government—will be gone through with all the pain and anxiety that that entails. That will be costly and painful and will be divisive. At the end of that process, people may vote no. If the noble Lord thinks that we are exaggerating, he has only to see what will happen when Mr Prescott decides which region will be approached.
	My next point is very important in this context. The noble Lord, Lord Shutt, referred to Skipton. In vast areas of the country—certainly, Northumberland is one of them—people may vote no in a referendum. However, people in urban areas may vote yes. If the noble Lord thinks that losing their shire districts is the price rural areas must pay for having democratically voted no but then being outvoted by people in Newcastle, Birmingham, Greater Manchester, Leeds and Bradford, a large shock awaits him.

Lord Shutt of Greetland: I suspect that in places such as Skipton and other rural areas concern about the local government situation could produce a huge turnout as it is a matter that people understand. In the metropolitan areas nothing is going to happen to local government, and perhaps there is less concern about the matter. We all know that, although people are keen to have the opportunity to vote, they are less keen on actually voting. There could be high turnouts in areas where the real concern is local government reform, not the real issue of democratising the regions.

Lord Rooker: I shall stop being as frank as I have been. I have never read a speech in my life, as my officials know, irrespective of which Chamber I was a Member of.

The Earl of Onslow: I ask the Minister please to continue his old habit. We all enjoy it and also he is always much more convincing when he says what he thinks government policy is and we can watch the marvellous expressions of officials when they wince. I ask the Minister please to maintain his frankness.

Lord Rooker: All I usually ask for is a set of bullet points. I cannot read a narrative text; it is as simple as that. In future, I shall not count the number of paragraphs in my brief. However, I could have turned the page and read out more brief.
	The nub of the matter is clear, as I explained to the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, earlier. The two matters we are discussing are so closely linked in terms of the Government's policy that without one the other will not occur. As I say, that is not a threat. I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Blatch, that I have read the remarks of commentators who refer to the well-known propensity for very low turnouts in urban areas—where the electoral register is not as good as it could be—and to the well-known propensity for higher turnouts in non-urban areas. That will create some interesting battles in the regions.
	I do not accept for one moment that what appears to be a smaller population in one area will necessarily be outvoted by what appears to be a larger population in another. One has only to consider the different rates of turnout in different areas to appreciate that much work would have to be done to increase turnouts in urban areas in order to outvote rural areas. At the end of the day it is up to people how they vote. I accept that it is the Government's duty to put before the electorate all the consequences of a yes or no vote. That is what we shall seek to do. But if subsection (5) is removed, it will be impossible to do that.

The Earl of Caithness: I listened with great care to what the Minister said. I commend him for fighting the battle almost single-handed on his Benches. Why are the Government preventing the Boundary Committee from looking at the unitary boundary and asking it to consider only counties and districts? Taking up the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Shutt, it might be logical and sensible to alter the unitary boundary. Why cannot the Boundary Committee alter the unitary boundary?

Lord Rooker: That is an important issue. However, we shall discuss the matter later in more detail. We are debating the Second Reading aspect of the Bill. There are plenty of amendments tabled on which I can seek further information before we reach them. My understanding is that we do not want to cause more disruption than is necessary to the existing local government framework. That is why we gave a commitment that existing unitary authorities would not have their boundaries interfered with. That seems to me common sense and is part of the Boundary Committee's remit.
	I appreciate that common-sense points have been made in regard to different parts of England with different boundaries and different histories. What has already happened in terms of previous boundary reviews is important in this regard. I shall ensure that when we reach the relevant part of the Bill I shall have specific answers to the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Shutt, and the noble Earl, Lord Caithness.

Baroness Hamwee: I hope to start on a non-contentious point. My noble friend Lord Greaves explained more clearly than I did that our amendments are not intended to be an attack on later Conservative amendments regarding further conditions.
	The noble Baroness, Lady Blatch, raised the issue of votes in different areas. Our Amendments Nos. 40 and 47 relate to that. With universal franchise in this country, I am staggered that the Government are working on the basis that there will be differential turnout. That is appalling. That is the clear implication of the Minister's remarks. By telling us that there simply will not be a Bill, the noble Lord persuaded the noble Earl, Lord Onslow, of the validity of our amendment. I hope that it may persuade the noble Lord, Lord Waddington.
	These are entirely separate issues. There may be arguments for local government review but they should not be confused with the functions and powers of regional government. If local government and regional government are separate—we believe that they are different types of government—to confuse the two in this way is a recipe for disaster.
	My noble friend Lord Shutt referred to pumping in democracy to the existing regional tier. That is what we on these Benches seek to do. The Minister has been entirely consistent. He told us at Second Reading of the consequences of decoupling these issues: that there would not be a Bill. He explained the consequences: he has not explained the reasons. He says that the Government do not have a plan for local government. If that is so, why not? But it seems to me that they do. That plan is inherent in the Bill. It is central government plus two tiers and you can take your pick as to which those tiers will be.
	We have touched on some of the nonsenses; I shall refer to another one. My noble friend has even given me a diagram which is as good as a White Paper, as we have been told. We have the existing unitary authority of Blackpool. Under these arrangements Wyre and Fylde cannot go in with Blackpool. That part of the Lancashire coast is built up almost all the way along. There is not that much of a division between Blackpool and Lytham St Anne's. My grandmother is probably revolving in her grave. When she went to the Lancashire coast from Manchester she went distinctly to Lytham and not to Blackpool. However, the reality is that the situation is a nonsense.
	I am picking up words used by the Minister. He said that the White Paper is a mechanism. Yes, it is, but the White Paper is not the commitment; the manifesto is the commitment. That is why we are all so exercised by the White Paper. He said that this is a mantra. Yes, it is. It is not an intellectually coherent argument. My noble friend Lord Greaves said that repeated assertions do not make the point better or worse. The Minister may care to reflect on that because repeated assertions today have made the point worse.
	The question to electors should be about regional government alone. The referendum should be about regional government alone. I hope that there can be some discussion on what underlies government policy. I profoundly hope that these Benches can find a way to support the Government's overarching policy which is so threatened by the way they are going about it.

The Earl of Onslow: Before the noble Baroness concludes, it is an important issue for the Liberal Democrat and Conservative Front Benches. Would it not be wiser for the Liberal Democrats occasionally to break their habit and vote now on the issue rather than wait until Report stage? I put the idea to the noble Baroness. It is not a fiddly point which will tweak the provision on Report. It is a fundamental part of the Bill. I see noble Lords shaking their heads.

Baroness Hamwee: The temptation to divide the Committee has been great but I do not think that tonight is the night to do so. The Government's arrangements ensure that their numbers are here. We are coming towards the home straight of today's Session. It is not the habit of a lifetime for Conservatives and Liberal Democrats to fail to co-operate. I know that the noble Earl did not say that. The time to divide will come but now is not the time to do so. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Baroness Blatch: moved Amendment No. 9:
	Page 1, line 10, leave out "two" and insert "five"

Baroness Blatch: In moving Amendment No. 9, I speak also to Amendments Nos. 14 and 17. Amendments Nos. 9 and 17 are consequential upon Amendment No. 14. Amendment No. 14 requires the Secretary of State to publish a written report by an independent auditor verifying that the costs of establishing regional assemblies do not escalate above the costs of existing local government systems.
	There are huge concerns about costs. We still await at least a ballpark figure of the costs of a reorganisation which would involve the abolition of councils. That seems fairly critical. Any area which agrees to have regional assemblies will incur huge costs. It is important that the people of the region, and of the country, know them. They may come from national taxation or local taxation.
	The costs are large even if there is a no vote. During debate on the previous amendment, we heard that the detailed work about the shape of local government below the tier of regional government will involve visits, public meetings and discussions with councils and community people. There will be much discussion on one, two or perhaps more options. There will be feasibility studies. The Minister has been open with us and told us that that work will take at least a year. We know that it will be involved and detailed and extremely painful for the people at local level.
	First, who will meet the costs of such an exercise? Who will meet them if it is a no vote? Who will meet them if it is a yes vote. There is a distinction between the source of funding if the vote goes different ways. It is abortive work if it is a no vote; and it will be fruitful if it is a yes vote. We know already that the soundings committee has been all over the country, to all eight regions, and completed its work. Will the Minister tell us how much that cost, and how detailed and involved the work has been, as well as telling us who has been consulted and who has not? We are beginning to find out that a large number of people in the region were not aware of the soundings exercise and did not receive any of the materials for it. Despite that, will the Minister tell us about the costs to date?
	Will he also tell us the costs of the local government review and reorganisation, and the running costs of regional assemblies? That is the kind of information that needs to be available when the Boundary Committee has done its job. We know that the Welsh Assembly costs almost £150 million to run, compared with the running of the Welsh Office, which was a mere £72 million. That figure does not take into account the vast array of new buildings in London, Wales and Scotland.
	For reasons of transparency, it is essential that people are aware of the costs before—I emphasise the word "before"—they vote in a referendum. They need to know the costs to the point of the referendum, and the predicted costs of moving fully to a unitary system below regional assemblies. The facts need to be broken down on the table, if people are to make an informed choice.
	As the Minister said, the area most likely to be determined by the Deputy Prime Minister is the North East. If he does not determine that area, I cannot think what area he will determine as the first regional authority. One has only to consider the complications of Northumberland to realise that it will be an enormous exercise. It is important for the people of that area to know precisely what they would be voting for and what the costs would be.
	The other amendments in the list under my name are consequential, and change the two conditions to five. I beg to move.

Lord Waddington: I should be surprised if the Minister accepted Amendment No. 14, because it is inconceivable that any independent auditor will come to the conclusion that,
	"no additional expenditure overall would be incurred as a result of",
	this exercise.
	We know perfectly well that an enormous amount of public money is involved. We recently had a paper from the Cheshire County Council, part of which stated that the estimate of the cost of the local government review in Cheshire alone would cost Cheshire residents an estimated £60 million, which is an average of £204 for every household. As I said on Second Reading, the limited Heseltine local government review at the beginning of the 1990s cost about £600 million.
	No one can tell me that a great deal of public money will not be involved. Will the Minister take the opportunity to give us some figures from the Government's estimate of costs? Great sums are involved. I could go on at great length on this subject, but there is no point in doing so. The Minister has been helpful throughout our deliberations, so I hope that he will take some advice from his officials and give us a list of costs. We would love to know what the grand total is—it will surprise people, and the surprise will not be pleasant.

Lord Greaves: This is an interesting amendment. We could not support it in its exact wording, not least because the vision we have for regional government might include limited increases in public spending if the money was spent on useful things, not simply on bureaucracy and reorganisation. Technically, we would find it difficult to support the amendment, but it is a useful probing amendment, and I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Blatch, on moving it.
	As the noble Lord, Lord Waddington, said, the amendment provides the Government with an opportunity to set out the costs of the exercise, which they have not done so far. That should be done, not least from the point of view of those who want regional government to be established because, if they cannot come up with credible figures, the Opposition will do it for them. The figures that the Opposition produce may be genuine, or they may be grossly inflated to support their case.
	There are four main areas of costs relating to regional government. First, there is bound to be an additional cost of running the regional assembly, in terms of councillors, support services and those who provide the advice and reports. The costs will include all the ordinary support services that any organisation requires.
	Secondly, there will be an administrative or bureaucratic cost of running all the regional bureaucracies, including the elected regional assembly when one is established. It is not clear why that sum should be higher than it is now, if the regional assembly takes over some functions of the regional quangos and bureaucracies and is not simply an add-on that will monitor, supervise, scrutinise and produce strategic plans without actually doing anything. All that would cost a lot more extra money. If, on the other hand, the new body was put in charge of running things, which the Government by and large do not want it to do, it could result in savings by integrating several separate organisations.
	Thirdly, there will be the cost of the operations put under the control of the new body, if any are put under their control at all.
	Fourthly, there will be the cost of local government reorganisation, consequent on the establishment of a regional assembly in a particular region. I do not want to go over that argument again, but there is clearly a cost to reorganising local government. In the longer term, that cost may be offset by new structures being cheaper than existing structures. The noble Lord, Lord Hanningfield, shakes his head. Like him, I have been through local government reorganisations in the past, and I also doubt that that would be the case. The one cost that cannot be denied is the cost of the reorganisation itself.
	There are four areas in which the Government must establish the costs, in any region where they are putting proposals to people through a referendum. If they do not do that, people like the noble Lord, Lord Waddington, will produce their own figures, which may be 10 times as high as the Government's.

Baroness Hanham: It would be a triumph of hope over experience to suggest that the costs after the reorganisation of local government and the introduction of regional government would be less than they are now. I was interested by the suggestion made by the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, that taking over quangos might reduce the cost. From my understanding of the White Paper, few of those quangos will be taken over; they will be left with a superstructure on top of them and a few elected members to oversee them.
	I should declare an interest as a member of a local authority. It is abundantly clear from the experience of London that nothing has remained as a neutral cost. The cost to the council tax payer of the introduction of the Greater London Authority and the building of the new assembly city hall has risen 10 times since the assembly was introduced. That is the cost without a reorganisation taking place underneath—it is simply the cost of the superstructure.
	Another aspect that has not been mentioned is that reorganisation means, by definition, putting people out of work. If you double up on unitaries, for example, you will probably not require the same number of people in local government. You will also have the oncosts of putting those people out to grass.
	This is an important probing amendment to try to discover whether the Government have any idea of the total cost of a reorganisation. I know that the Minister will say that it depends on the size of the region, and I accept that; the cost in the North East of England will be entirely different from that in the South East. However, we need to address the issue. As the Minister is looking a bit weary, we do not expect him to produce the figures today. However, it would be useful if we could have at least an acknowledgement that those costs have to be spelled out while the Bill is still in Parliament.

Lord Rooker: I feel quite chipper. I have been to the gym twice this week and I will carry on as long as the Committee wants. I gave some figures on Second Reading and I will repeat them as they are the only figures that I have at the moment to share with the Committee. As the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, said, Amendment No. 14 introduces an additional precondition before a referendum can be held. Although the amendment does not specify the time period, it would require the auditor to confirm that no additional public expenditure would be incurred. I freely admit that that is a quite onerous condition—which is probably why it was so drafted. As she said, it is a probing amendment. I will therefore not nit-pick about the details.
	As I think I said on Second Reading, there will be costs in establishing the elected regional assemblies. However, we think that that is a price worth paying in areas where people have voted for them. Chapter 5 of the White Paper set out the direct costs of the assemblies that could be estimated at that stage, which was some time ago. We think that the assemblies will be public investments and will bring benefits to the people at large. Although I gave some figures on Second Reading, I realised that I was taking an inordinately long time to reply and may have missed out one or two.
	The cost of the referendum, for example, will vary according to the number of people. Our view is that it costs bout 80 pence per elector for local authority mayoral referendums using all postal ballots. On that basis, the cost would range from about £2 million in the North East to about £6 million in the South East. Our best estimate of the average running costs of the assembly—one of the items listed by the noble Lord, Lord Greaves—is about £25 million gross. We think that about £5 million of that will be directly offset because posts will be transferred from various bodies such as the Government's regional offices. We think that the remaining costs could be absorbed within the assembly's programme budget through efficiency savings of about 5 per cent, although less in the larger regions. The assembly could therefore have a major impact on the region's productivity and prosperity.
	I cannot even begin to give a figure for the potential cost of local government reorganisation. It is much too early to make such an assessment, which depends on a range of factors such as how many regions choose to have an elected assembly and the structures recommended by the Boundary Committee in each case. Reorganisation might result in cost savings if the structures recommended by the Boundary Committee led to economies of scale or reduced the number of partnerships in which public sector organisations had to engage. So I make no claim to being accurate. We do not have those figures because it is much too early.
	The cost of the Boundary Committee's reviews prior to the referendum ranges from about £750,000 to £3.2 million. As the Boundary Committee's figures have been refined and are now more accurate, they are not the same as earlier figures. The Boundary Committee has continued to revise the figures since publication of the Bill's Explanatory Notes. These figures are therefore different from those in the Explanatory Notes in the House of Commons.
	Given the thirst for detailed figures on costs and on cost/benefit analyses of the number of chief executives, bottle washers, cleaners and whether services are privatised or in-house, I realise that that is probably a wholly inadequate reply. I can think of loads of issues and may even table some amendments myself. However, it is just too early to provide that information. If the process continues and the Secretary of State makes his statement, and as we get closer to a referendum and publication of the Government's view and all the items we promised to publish, we will be able to give better and more up-to-date figures. If there were a successful "Yes" vote and we were closer to introducing legislation to set up a regional assembly, we would clearly be expected to give the House much more detailed figures.

Lord Waddington: I wonder whether the Minister can give me an answer to a question that I asked the other day. Clause 17 of the Bill enables the Secretary of State to make payments to the Electoral Commission for it to do its work. But who would foot the bill incurred by a local authority which had to go to all the expense of servicing a Boundary Committee review if there were then a referendum that resulted in a "No" vote? Can the Minister please assure me that the Government will foot the bill, not the unfortunate council tax payers in the area concerned when the council was put to enormous expense as a result of the Government's folly?

Lord Rooker: That situation would arise only if the council tax payers and others in the electorate voted "No". It is part of the cost of having a choice. I cannot answer the question, but I can assure the noble Lord that I will know the answer by the time we reach Clause 17.

Baroness Blatch: Perhaps I was naie in taking the Government at their word. I think that my noble friend Lord Waddington has taken me to task for tabling an amendment that was impossible for the Government to meet. It is unlikely that they could ever include in the Bill a report that provided a guarantee that no additional expenditure would be incurred. However, I am taking the Government at their word. They have said on various occasions that the proposals would not only be neutral but might even be beneficial to local people. However, given what we have heard, that is very hard to believe. Not only on Second Reading, but in a subsequent Question, the noble Lord told us:
	"I believe that the penny has dropped that there is no new money. If anyone is supporting the Bill in the hope that there will be more money, do not bother; stick with the status quo".—[Official Report, 20/2/03; col. 1328.]
	However, we are talking about the preliminaries to a possible "No" vote, and those preliminaries will incur expenditure. Unless the Chancellor is being uncharacteristically generous, that money can be found only by top-slicing local authorities' budgets. It cannot come from anywhere else unless the Chancellor will set aside the funds. Given that this exercise could be under way in the course of this financial year, in the sense of giving the Boundary Committee work to do, it would be helpful to know the source of that money.
	The noble Lord has not said who will pay for a "No" vote or a "Yes" vote or for the added costs of local authorities who had to defend their corner in the review. He said that that is the price that local authorities will pay for having a choice. However, as we have said so often today, many county and district councils will have voted "No" but been outvoted by the large urban areas. I am reminded by my noble friend Lord Hanningfield, who knows the global statistics of local government better than I do, that Greater Manchester has about 2 million people and that Northumberland has less than half a million people. The re-organisation has no effect on Manchester because it is a unitary authority. It could make the decision for the whole of the north-western region, and many of the shire districts will have voted no. This is a horrendous proposition in that a very large sum of money is going to fall on the review and boundary committee exercise. It has already fallen on the soundings committee exercise. The noble Lord did not refer to the cost of that committee. Can he say what was the budget allowed for the soundings committee and what has been the outturn of that budget ? I can see now that my amendment is fanciful in a practical sense because there is no way in which expenditure will be contained at either a neutral or less than neutral level.
	I shall think about what has been said. I shall give way to the Minister to come back to me on some of these points because we need answers. I fully accept that the noble Lord cannot give the costings of re-organisation because each one will be different. We could not possibly second guess what it is going to be at this point. My amendment does not ask for that. It quite specifically says that at the point where people are being asked to make a choice they should know what all the costs are in some detail. They should know what the running costs will be and the capital costs. We know that the capital costs in Wales, Scotland and London have been horrendous. But it is after the event.
	People were asked to vote before they saw any details of the Bills. They went through another place with very cursory discussion. We did our customary thing in this House and challenged and tested some of the propositions. The London Bill was changed quite considerably during its passage.
	I say to the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, that many of the changes which were made to the Bill came about as a result of the Government running scared of what Mr Livingstone might do if he became Mayor of London. Very substantial changes were made by the Government themselves to make sure that his wings were clipped and he could not go too far in his excesses in London government.
	Nevertheless, these are serious points. The Minister has given us outline expenditure figures which are helpful as far as they go. But I want at least one promise that all the costings will be put in detail before the people as they come to vote. It would be helpful to know whether it is to be top-sliced by local government. Who will pay for a yes or no vote? Has the Chancellor put money aside to cover these costs or is poor old local government going to see yet more money top-sliced from the local government budgets?

Lord Rooker: I shall try to answer a couple of the points. As regards the costs of the sounding exercise, I shall take advice. But given the fact that there will be a major Statement made in Parliament in due course by the Deputy Prime Minister on the results of the sounding exercise, there will probably be documents published at the same time in summary form. I suspect that there will be a financial statement as well about the costs. That would be quite reasonable, but I do not know whether that is planned.
	We are to have discussions with the Local Government Association about some of the one-off costs. Generally speaking, local government has a great deal of flexibility today as regards its budgets. In due course this House will receive the Local Government Bill, which gives much more flexibility as regards the power of local government over its own finance. I am not saying that there is a bottomless pit of money, but in some of the areas local government would be expected to carry costs of certain of its functions in responding, I suspect, to the boundary review or facilitating the administration of the boundary committee work. That would be quite normal local government expenditure.
	A great deal of work will have taken place before the referendum. It would be wholly reasonable to give further and better estimates of the cost to the region. One cannot be absolutely precise. I take on board what the noble Baroness has said about the cost to Wales, Scotland and London. Lessons have to be learnt in a way which explains the potential costs to the electorate. We have already heard the free spenders among the Liberal Democrats saying that they would have wanted to increase local government expenditure anyway. That is what the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, said a few minutes ago. There are plenty of people who are set to put up costs, but the Government are not part of them.

Lord Greaves: What the Minister said is not an accurate rendering of what I said, which was that if regional assemblies were doing genuinely useful jobs and spending on useful things such as the local transport infrastructure, which the noble Baroness said would not be allowed under the plans, some increase in spending might not be a bad thing.

Lord Rooker: I withdraw what I just said with sincere apologies. I am trying to cause some division between the Liberal Democrats and the Tories because too much coalition work has taken place today. I do not have any further information, although I take on board the quite reasonable questions which have been asked about finance. At certain stages more information will be available. I do not suppose that there will ever be a stage when it will be possible to set out everything because it is a fairly drawn-out process. We are going through a Parliament in order to set up the assemblies. No one is forecasting that if there is a yes vote in a referendum an assembly would be set up in this Parliament. Indeed, the opposite is the case. This is not something which is going to happen overnight. Therefore, I do not suppose that there will ever be a point in time when there will be a snapshot of all the costs. But certainly there can be a running commentary on what the issues are costing, with the best estimates available. It is wholly reasonable to have that provided to Parliament let alone to the electorate.

Lord Stoddart of Swindon: Before the noble Lord sits down perhaps I may ask a question. I was out of the Chamber for a little while. Have we had any mention of the costs which will be incurred by the elected representatives? There will be 25 of them. If they are to be paid, together with administrative expenses and travelling expenses, the costs will be at least £100,000, which makes a total of £2.5 million. Has any estimate been made of these costs? Were they mentioned while I was out of the Chamber? I shall be very much obliged if the noble Lord can give me a reply on that.

Lord Rooker: There must have been within the global figure of an average of £20 million for running the assembly. I cannot find anything specific in Chapter 5 about the costs of the assembly persons, if I may be politically correct for the moment. I dare not call them councillors after the previous questions about local government. They will not be councillors but assembly persons. I hope that they will not be called that but that is the only name I can think of to get me off the hook at the moment.
	I do not know the cost, but the overall estimate of the assemblies is about £20 million net. I gave a figure of £25 million, but £5 million is to be offset from other changes. Nevertheless, as the Bill progresses and it turns into the referendum, further information will be available to answer the very precise question which the noble Lord asked.

The Earl of Caithness: I take it from the Minister's reply that the answer to the question from my noble friend Lady Blatch is that the costs, even if there is a no vote, will be born by local government as it exists at the moment, but that the Ministry will see whether it can make it more equitable?

Lord Rooker: That is a fair way of putting it because I am not able to give a precise answer to that reasonable question. Some continuing costs are normal local government expenditure, whatever the outcome. I expect to have more information at a future date, but cannot promise to provide it next week in Committee.

Baroness Blatch: We are grateful and look forward to receiving that information at the next stage of the Bill. The Minister's comments will frustrate our local government colleagues throughout the country, when he says that local authorities will meet Boundary Commission costs as part of normal expenditure. All local authorities have to find an extra 1 per cent for their staff when the new national insurance contributions come onstream, meet inflationary pay awards and face enormous financial pressures relating to the requirements placed on them for new social security services.
	In addition, the Bill to overcome bed blocking will mean local authorities incurring even more expenditure. The Secretary of State for Education and Skills has taken a direct power, which he plans to use this year, to make compulsory passporting of funding down to schools—irrespective of whether or not the amount of grant covers that passported money.
	There is little scope for local authorities to access additional money to meet extra costs. That is especially true in the case of local authorities who say "No" to a referendum and who will be miffed and disappointed if they then have to meet the costs of the boundary commissioner and the review exercise. Nevertheless, the Minister has been as helpful as he can at this stage, so I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
	[Amendments Nos. 10 to 14 not moved.]

Baroness Blatch: moved Amendment No. 15:
	Page 1, line 12, at end insert—
	"(4A) The fourth condition is that the Secretary of State has concluded on the basis of evidence available to him that there is substantial support from the business community, regional chambers, local authorities, cultural and voluntary sector and local electors within the region for the holding of such a referendum and such evidence has been laid before both Houses of Parliament."

Baroness Blatch: With this, I will speak also to Amendments Nos. 22 and 23. Together they seek a guarantee that consideration by the Secretary of State of the level of interest in a region for holding a referendum will be a formal, thorough and in-depth process—and that there is some evidence to show that was the case.
	Specifically, there must be wide consultation with the interested parties—including business, the cultural and voluntary sectors, local government and the wider community. Once the consultation process is complete, the Secretary of State must justify his decision to hold a referendum—this is most important—by placing the evidence that he has gathered before both Houses.
	There is no mention in the Bill of the procedures that the Secretary of State must observe to determine the level of interest in any region. The amendments will safeguard all those directly affected by giving them the opportunity to have their voices heard prior to the decision to hold a referendum. The Secretary of State will be required to take time to consider the opinions of interested parties in every individual region. By ensuring that evidence is laid before Parliament, there can be no shortcuts by the Secretary of State so that false or subjective assumptions or prejudices determine the final decision rather than an open process of wide consultation.
	The soundings exercise has been a secretive business. Although the Minister may rightly say that everyone knew about it, people and organisations in the business and voluntary sectors were not aware of that exercise and had no input. The noble Lord offered a fulsome apology to noble Lords who were not alerted to the soundings and so were unable to become involved. We only knew of it when the Bill was presented for its First Reading.
	This important part of the Bill concerns the process that will trigger all the expenditure to which the last group of amendments referred and that part of the work of the Boundaries Commission which establishes an expensive review. Some parts of the country will be particularly aggrieved when, having not expressed an interest in regional assemblies, they will nevertheless incur costs. As the soundings committee is the starting point, the Deputy Prime Minister owes it to both Houses to know the scientific basis on which he makes his decisions. I beg to move.

The Earl of Caithness: It is crucial to know what has been done by the soundings committee and where it has been. Remote hill areas of the North East and North West may not contain many votes, but it is crucial that their residents, whose livelihoods are vitally important, are consulted. I am sure that the Minister instinctively will want to publish all the material in question, but perhaps he will confirm that will be done in full.

The Earl of Onslow: There is a tendency among all British Governments—I do not exonerate my colleagues on the Front Bench when they were in office, because they were just as bad—to keep things secret. We are the only people who pass a freedom of information Act that allows one to find out absolutely nothing.
	There can be no harm in the Government publishing as much information as they can on who they have consulted. It will only add strength to the Government's case if they show that they consulted widely and conclusively with all interests. Even though the re-creation of a heptarchy is a peculiarly stupid idea, if the Government want to make it agreeable or even possibly convert me, they should make absolutely clear who they consult, why they consult, when they consult and how they consult. That will do no one any harm but much good to the body politic and the doctrine of secrecy in this country.

Baroness Hanham: At present, the Secretary of State alone will carry responsibility for deciding the outcome of the soundings exercise. The criteria have been blurred, so it is hard to know the basis. The websites are not much more helpful.
	It seems to us that sole burden should be shared by Parliament knowing the basis on which the Secretary of State is proposing to unleash a Boundary Committee review. I hope that the Minister agrees and, if not today, will return with the news that the Secretary of State will publish the evidence on which he makes his decisions region by region—not a broad overview but what the soundings have produced, what questions have been asked and who has been consulted. It is important that all the interests that the amendment lists, who will make up a fair part of a community, have the opportunity to say whether they would consider voting—which presumably will be the basis on which the Secretary of State will judge the level of interest.

Lord Greaves: This is an extremely helpful amendment because it introduces a very important matter. It is a peculiar situation: the soundings—they have been described as soundings rather than consultations—have taken place before the legislation has gone through Parliament. We understand that the Deputy Prime Minister intends to make a Statement soon after it goes through Parliament—that is, if he has not withdrawn it in pique at amendments approved by the Committee. We shall see.
	It is important that the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, are taken on board. We do not need to know what the responses were in each region simply in the interests of openness and democracy but as the basis on which the Deputy Prime Minister will make his decision. It is important that he also publishes the criteria on which he has assessed that evidence so that he is seen to be taking an objective decision on the basis of the same criteria within each region and that the decisions stand up in relation to the soundings and the evidence. Otherwise, he will get into terrible difficulty defending decisions in the courts. There are high stakes here and this is the sort of matter aggrieved local authorities might take to judicial review. I would be grateful for those assurances.

Lord Stoddart of Swindon: I should be interested to know about the soundings that have been taken. I have had a number of complaints from people in various parts of the country that official or quasi-official meetings have been held to discuss the desirability or otherwise of regionalisation that have been limited to people who are in favour of them anyway. In many cases, people known to be opposed to regional government have been excluded from the meetings and refused admission.
	I am sure that that is not hearsay, because I have some evidence of it. If soundings have taken place it would be useful to know how, why and when; whether they have been restricted to people known to be in favour of regional government; and whether local electors have been excluded from such gatherings.

Lord Rooker: In response to my noble friend Lord Stoddart, although this applies to any noble Lord, if anyone has any complaints about people being snuffed out of soundings, discouraged, or barred because of their views, we would like to hear about it. That is important. I am not challenging my noble friend to give chapter and verse now or at any other time, but if people have evidence of what amounts to maladministration I hope that complaints will be made.
	In the spirit of the amendment, when the Deputy Prime Minister makes his statement to Parliament explaining his decision on which regions would undergo a review with a view to holding a referendum, we will publish a summary of the views that have led him to make that decision. It has to be published on a regional basis; it could not be mixed up globally as that would be unfair.
	We said in the soundings document that unless people said otherwise we would assume that their views could be made public. If they wrote in confidence for some reason, we would respect the confidence but treat them in the numerical calculations by adding them to the figures according to whether they said yes or no. It is important, when the Deputy Prime Minister makes his announcement on the basis of the soundings for the regions, that it stands the test of parliamentary scrutiny or scrutiny by others. That is why we cannot rush the matter.
	The date of 3rd March has been and gone. I have made it clear that we are listening to the Committee's views while the Bill goes through Parliament, but it will take time to carry out the analysis. It has begun and we have resources for it, but nothing has been supplied to Ministers and nor should it be until we are ready to make judgments, as my right honourable friend will be. But that will not be until after Royal Assent, if the Bill ever receives Royal Assent. I will move heaven and earth to obtain Royal Assent, but I stress to the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, that I am not prejudging parliamentary scrutiny. It is up to Parliament, not me, whether the Bill receives Royal Assent.
	We will be as open as possible about the basis on which the Deputy Prime Minister makes his announcement and decisions. That is the only fair basis.

The Earl of Onslow: The Minister is right to tell us that the Secretary of State will say who he has consulted. Some of us are worried that, for example, it is not like consulting only the League Against Cruel Sports when wanting to ban hunting. The consultation has to be sufficiently wide so he can give the undertaking that he will make sure that he obtains a broad view of those against and those pro.

Lord Rooker: It is crucial, notwithstanding the problem of issuing the soundings document. Just over one thousand copies were issued to various organisations and the establishment. I do not mean that pejoratively, but the distribution covered many organisations. It is important that when the Secretary of State announces his decision he can set out either in the statement or along with other documents the balance of argument on which he made his decision. That means making it clear where there is opposition to the form and structure proposed by various organisations and interest groups—of whatever size—in the regions. That is the only basis on which his decision can be judged.
	In announcing his decision he will need to take comfort from the fact that he has clearly indicated that he has looked at the range of opinion and disclosed it to the people who will be scrutinising the decision. We will publish a summary of the consultation, but more than that is required in order to come to Parliament and say, on balance, in a particular region because of all the factors and views he has taken a decision proposing that we go one way or the other.
	Perhaps there will be some disappointed faces; I do not know. I am not prejudging the matter. It is important that we do more than make a mechanical list of those for and against. We have to explain why we made our decision. Soundings are soundings, so it is important that we do a proper professional job in analysing the results and explaining them in such a way that we are comfortable with the decision we bring to Parliament and, I hope, Parliament is comfortable about the way we have gone about making the decision.
	There will be a festering sore if there is a degree of dispute about how the decision was arrived at. It is much easier to disagree with a decision if one is comfortable about the way in which it was reached, otherwise the issue can fester. We will return to the matter during the Bill's passage and certainly after Royal Assent.

Baroness Blatch: I am grateful to the Minister. The Deputy Prime Minister, Mr Prescott, would do well to heed his advice. In his reply he seemed to understand what we are asking for through the amendment and say that he believes there should be as much openness as possible when the Deputy Prime Minister decides which area of the country shall first be given the opportunity to choose whether it wants regional assemblies. I would like to have confirmation that he will come to Parliament to announce that decision and not do so in some glitzy-ritzy presentation outside Parliament. I also hope that he will do exactly what the Minister said; that is, produce the evidence on which he bases that decision.
	We do not currently know what percentage of people will not have been seen. I live in East Anglia but I received nothing through my door. I was not aware of a sounding exercise until the Bill had its First Reading in this House even though I am very involved with local government colleagues and others in East Anglia. It would be helpful to know who has been communicated with. We do not know the criteria, which have never been set out—certainly not the criteria on which that decision will be made. It would be helpful to know that when the decision is made.
	I will withdraw the amendment. In doing so, I thank the Minister for his good humour and patience throughout our debate. He will accept, but may not agree, that we see this as a very important constitutional matter. The Bill's Committee stage is the only stage procedurally that allows us the flexibility to tease out details from the Minister and to have an iterative process between each other. Such details will be crucial in terms of understanding the way in which the Bill and what flows from it will work in practice. With my fulsome thanks to the Minister, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
	[Amendments Nos. 16 and 17 not moved.]

Lord Evans of Temple Guiting: I beg to move that the House do now resume.

Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to.
	House resumed.

North Korea

Lord Alton of Liverpool: rose to ask Her Majesty's Government what is their policy on the threat posed by North Korea to international security and to the human rights of its citizens.
	My Lords, I am glad to have an opportunity to ask a Question that I tabled last November. It allows us to consider the international crisis sparked by North Korea's decision to reopen its nuclear reactor at Yongbyon and its continued serial abuse of human rights. I am extremely grateful to all noble Lords who will participate in this debate, particularly the Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Symons, who must be under great pressure at the moment. Many of us greatly admire the way in which she is handling her onerous responsibilities during the present international crisis.
	Unfolding events in Iraq have inevitably distracted us from the arguably even more dangerous crisis posed by North Korea. If North Korea reactivates its plutonium reprocessing plant, also located at Yongbyon, it could reprocess 8,000 spent fuel rods and would be able to produce weapons-grade plutonium within weeks, accumulating enough material for about six bombs before the end of the year. The United States Government believe that North Korea may already have such nuclear weapons.
	Some noble Lords may have heard the report on the BBC this morning from its state department correspondent, Jon Leyne. He reported that experts believe that the north could soon have a production line that could produce up to a bomb a month. The BBC also reported that sources in Tokyo believe that Pyongyang may be preparing to test a Rodong medium-range ballistic missile that is capable of reaching most of Japan.
	As the former US Defense Secretary William Perry recently remarked:
	"I believe that Korea is the most dangerous spot in the world today".
	In 1994, the Clinton administration concluded the Agreed Framework with Pyongyang. From its inception, the accord, which had a price tag of some 5 billion dollars, fell significantly behind its schedule, most notably in failing to deliver two light-water reactors in return for the abandonment of the highly enriched uranium—HEU—nuclear programme.
	By 2000, while the North Korean missile talks were collapsing, North Korea had clandestinely recommenced the HEU programme. That was exposed by US intelligence in July 2002. Kim Jong-il conceded that he had broken the agreement. He expelled the International Atomic Energy Authority monitors and pulled out of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. Since then, Pyongyang has been demanding bilateral negotiations with the Bush Administration, characterised in Washington as "reward for bad behaviour". The belief is that giving in to blackmail leads only to more blackmail. So far, the US response has been very measured not only to the provocation of the recommencement of the HEU programme and the recent intimidation of a US plane in international airspace but also to this week's ballistic tests in the Sea of Japan.
	This evening, given the Prime Minister's declaration that he sees North Korea as the next challenge for the international community, I hope that the Government will share with us their view of this crisis. Do they, for instance, believe that there is any realistic prospect of a new comprehensive mechanism to replace the 1994 Agreed Framework and a commensurate abandonment of the HEU programme and any possible plutonium-based programmes in return for a non-aggression pact? Can the Minister tell us what progress is being made in engaging regional players, most obviously China, Japan and Russia? Following the recent visit of Mr Bill Rammell to the region, what role are Her Majesty's Government and the EU playing in creating conditions for negotiations? What is our view of the demands by North Korea for bilateral talks in contrast with the insistence by the US and others on a multilateral approach?
	The Minister will have seen the view expressed earlier this week by Yoriko Kawaguchi, the Japanese Foreign Minister, that the UK could play the role of an honest broker. What is the Government's view of that and of the use of sanctions and isolation, containment and negotiation? I hope that she will share with us an analysis of the events that would pave the way for the use of force. For instance, does the Minister believe that the United States would be forced to intervene if North Korea attempted to export nuclear weapons or directly threatened the US mainland? Can she give us an assessment of the dangers that she believes are posed to South Korea and Japan? Could she also explain what Mr Rammell meant when he said last week:
	"I think this is going to get worse before it gets better"?
	The threat to international security posed by North Korea may best be considered by way of pernicious actions against its own citizens. North Korea's Stalinist dictatorship has treated its own people with unbelievable brutality and viciousness. The people are starving, the hospitals are without medicine and a whole generation has grown up stunted and mentally retarded because of malnutrition. Sixty per cent of the people starve. During the past decade, up to 3 million people are estimated to have died of famine, and aid agencies estimate that 70,000 children will die in the next few months. Those who dare to dissent are sent to re-education camps or to prisons.
	I tabled this Unstarred Question because last October a North Korean Christian who had escaped from the country came to see me here at Westminster. His story was harrowing and disturbing. He told me how he had seen his wife, and all bar one of his children shot dead by Kim Jong-il's militia. He subsequently escaped across the border to China with his one remaining son. The boy died en route.
	He encouraged me to read the prison memoirs of Soon Ok Lee. In them she describes in detail the brutality and barbarism of the system in North Korea. Anyone who believes it is right to appease this dictator should read Eyes of the Tailless Animals. It is Soon Ok Lee's account of the sham judicial system, the show trials, the starvation, the forced labour, the degradation, humiliation and rape of prisoners. Through her eyes we get a glimpse of this corrupt, paranoid and tyrannical regime. I will place a copy in the Library.
	Other noble Lords will return to the plight of refugees repatriated by the Chinese into North Korea. Some have been executed. Up to 300,000 North Koreans are now living in China. When returned, they face torture, interrogation and humiliation. Any woman who is returned and became pregnant while in China is forcibly aborted, supposedly to avoid the birth of babies "contaminated" by foreign influences. There are reports of repatriated North Koreans being corralled and bound together, with wire being passed around their wrists and through their noses.
	In January, I wrote to the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, Jack Straw, about the failure of the UNHCR to enforce the 1995 agreement on refugees made with China. Mr. Rammell replied on February 12th saying that it was for,
	"the parties involved to interpret their obligations under this agreement".
	I am sure that I am not alone in not being entirely clear what this means.
	I am sorry that we have not taken a more robust position on refugees. I hope the Government will also review their rejection of the suggestion I made to them that the United Kingdom should designate part of the funds that it provides to the UNHCR specifically for North Korean refugees in China. Organisations such as Jubilee Campaign and Christian Solidarity Worldwide have done us all a service by carefully documenting what is known about their plight. CSW's president, the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, had hoped to speak tonight but her commitments elsewhere have prevented her from being here. She wishes very much to be associated with what will be said about the plight of Christians in that country by my noble friends Lord Chan and Lord Hylton, the noble Lord, Lord Clarke of Hampstead, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Derby.
	Becoming a Christian in North Korea is a serious crime. Many are thrown into camps or prison, where they are kept in horrific conditions. There is evidence of water torture, severe beatings, sexual assault and violation, as well as psychological and verbal abuse. Up to 1 million people are incarcerated in the gulags of North Korea. On 2nd March at the 4th International Conference on North Korean Human Rights and Refugees held in Prague, the catalogue of human rights abuses was systematically documented. Professor Man-ho Heo, Professor of Law at Kyungpook National University, listed the human rights abuses in the detention camps. Again, I will place a copy of this report in the Library. According to the Sunday Times of 9th March, children of the elite, and, bizarrely, children born as triplets, are taken from their parents by the age of two. They are placed in special schools to break family bonds and to indoctrinate them with the ideology of the regime.
	The regime teaches its children to hate the outside world, especially the United States. Simultaneously, the late Kim Il-sung has been elevated and is revered as a god to be followed with unswerving devotion. In 1998, Medecins Sans Frontieres pulled out of North Korea because aid agencies were denied access to the so-called 9-27 camps in which sick and disabled children were dumped under a decree issued by Kim to "normalise" the country.
	This repressive and powerfully armed communist regime has subjugated its own people and now threatens and blackmails the world's democracies. It does so by threatening nuclear war unless the free world accedes to its demands. In particular, it insists that the international community recognises the permanence of its borders and continues to pay Danegeld. In any agreements made with this regime, human rights practices must be established and subsequently monitored. This was the process which was used by the US Government in negotiations with the Soviet Union in 1972, and it should form an integral part of any political security negotiations with Kim Jong-il.
	By championing the cause of those who are suffering in North Korea, the international community will create the conditions for the establishment of democracy. The creation of secure borders to the Soviet Union in 1975, as the Helsinki process ensured, led to free exchange of people, open borders and family reunification. The people very quickly learned the true nature of their repressive government. Helsinki's animating genius was to elevate human rights into the most lethal weapon targeted at totalitarianism. The victims of the gulags became the icons for hope and liberation. This was also a standard around which the free world was able to unite.
	Learning the lessons of Helsinki, we must do nothing to licence the regime in Pyongyang to commit further atrocities against its own people. We should enter negotiations which guarantee human rights, such as free exchange of people and religious liberties. We must also do more to promote democracy. I hope that the Minister will be able to tell us something about what we can do to help, for example, through BBC World Service broadcasts to promote democracy.
	By linking the present crisis with the human rights violations, a crisis can be turned into an opportunity. To do nothing about North Korea would be the most dangerous option of all.

Lord Clarke of Hampstead: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool, for providing the House with the opportunity of this short debate on the threat to international security posed by North Korea. It is a privilege to follow the noble Lord's excellent speech this evening. Like many others, I am deeply concerned by the Chinese Government's forced repatriation of North Korean refugees and the detention of North Korean asylum seekers in China who try to flee to third countries by boat.
	Since early December last year, the Chinese Government have sent home about 3,200 North Korean refugees, following a 100-day campaign against those fleeing North Korea. All the refugees forcibly repatriated to their homeland face the real risk of detention, torture and execution. Much stronger action is required from our Government and all the agencies involved to pressure the Chinese authorities to stop the forced repatriation of refugees and to put more pressure on the United Nations High Commission for Refugees to perform its responsibility of protecting those refugees, including the urgent implementation of the enforcement mechanism of its bilateral treaty with China.
	As a signatory to the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, the Chinese Government are responsible for the protection and humanitarian needs of the asylum seekers. With thousands of refugees being repatriated in North Korea and thousands more refugee lives in serious danger, the UNHCR must be strongly pressed to enforce its bilateral treaty with China via binding arbitration. The treaty signed between the UNHCR and China states that the UNHCR has the right to unimpeded access to refugees in China at all times. It also contains a dispute resolution mechanism whereby UNHCR could enforce the treaty via binding arbitration. Surprisingly, the UNHCR has yet to attempt to enforce the bilateral treaty with China through binding arbitration. I hope that the British Government will urge it to do that.
	Donor nations to the UNHCR have the right to designate part of the funds for particular projects, as has been mentioned. The British Government should force the UNHCR to act by specifically designating part of its funds to the UNHCR for North Korean refugees in China. The British Government's previous approach to the issue of North Korean refugees has not been effective in providing them with the protection that they urgently need. Thousands of those refugees have already been forcibly repatriated back to North Korea, where many face imprisonment or the likelihood of execution.
	Official Chinese figures state that around 10,000 of these refugees were returned to North Korea in 1999. The Chinese authorities have even offered rewards for information leading to the capture of North Korean refugees and those who help them. Furthermore, the Chinese policy of forced repatriation creates a climate of impunity in which North Korean refugees in China are exploited or blackmailed and many of the women are trafficked for sexual purposes. The North Korean refugees are unable or unwilling to report these abuses for fear of being forcibly repatriated. With an estimated 300,000 North Korean refugees in China, much stronger action is now desperately needed. Britain and our European Union partners should be addressing this massive humanitarian crisis.
	As the noble Lord, Lord Alton, mentioned, the British-based human rights organisation Jubilee Campaign recently reported that North Korea has one of the worst human rights records in the world. Among the many human rights violations perpetrated by the North Korean regime is extensive religious persecution. Thousands of Christians have been put in North Korean prison camps simply because of their religious beliefs. Christians are treated as political criminals and come under intense pressure to give up their faith and worship Kim Il-sung, the deceased founder of the Communist regime, instead. Christians are also regularly singled out for the most extreme treatment and toughest punishments in the prison camps. At least 100,000 Christians are believed to be among the 1 million prisoners of conscience suffering horrendous conditions throughout the country's 200 labour camps, where torture, starvation and death are commonplace. Some 300,000 Christians have disappeared in North Korea since 1953.
	My friends at Christian Solidarity Worldwide, which was also mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Alton, have produced several reports showing something of the horror of what is going on in North Korea. The noble Lord, Lord Alton, mentioned one case. It would bring tears to anybody's eyes to read of a father cradling a son who dies of cold in the night while trying to flee this persecution.
	The inhumanity of the treatment meted out to the prisoners in the camps is indescribable. Many people suffer in the camps, but Christians tend to suffer most of all. They are seen as a particular threat by the regime. They alone are not sentenced to a specific number of years. They are imprisoned as long as they keep their faith. If they renounce their faith and acknowledge Kim Il-sung, the former North Korean leader, and Kim Jong-il, the present leader, as the supreme power, they may walk free. They can go if they give up their faith. In addition, prison guards are promoted if they succeed in rehabilitating a Christian prisoner. This gives them a particular incentive to target Christians with beatings, torture, harsh labour, rape and other unspeakable treatment. In the report to which I referred from Christian Solidarity Worldwide there is a description of a former prisoner who saw a guard pour molten iron over living Christians because they would not renounce their faith.
	The Jubilee Campaign is one of several human rights organisations calling for stronger international action to protect North Korean refugees in China. The US human rights organisation, Human Rights Watch, released a report in November last year entitled, The Invisible Exodus: North Koreans in the People's Republic of China. In that report, a former North Korean prison guard gave detailed testimony about how the North Korean authorities deal with repatriated refugees. He said:
	"They investigated whether the repatriated people had any relationship with South Korea. If a person met South Koreans or reporters or wrote articles, or attended church or escaped after committing a crime in North Korea, they would be secretly killed".
	In 2000 a Korean pastor accused the North Korean regime of committing genocide against its own people. The clergyman, who preferred to remain anonymous for security reasons, made those comments in Germany at an annual Christian meeting. He pointed out that a million political prisoners and more than 100,000 Christians had to vegetate in concentration camps. According to the Korean pastor, the North Korean regime regards Christians as major enemies. Anyone caught with a Bible is dealt with as a South Korean spy and shot immediately. He said that 400 Christians had been executed in 1999. Many persecuted Christians are among those fleeing North Korea to China as refugees.
	There can be no doubt that the forced repatriation of North Korean refugees from China puts them at serious risk of severe persecution and death. The international community should not simply stand idly by while hundreds of thousands of refugees' lives are put in grave danger by the actions of the Chinese and North Korean authorities. I hope that the British Government will take the action that I have suggested previously.

Lord Hannay of Chiswick: My Lords, the problems posed to the international community by North Korea are pressing and urgent. They may have been temporarily masked by the consuming preoccupation with Iraq but they are none the less real; and the need to address them effectively has not receded—rather the contrary. So it is timely that we should debate them in this House and that we should have an opportunity to hear the views of the Government on how they will be addressed. If I focus on the international security aspects, it is not out of lack of concern for human rights in North Korea, which can best be described, as the two speakers who preceded me have shown, as virtually non-existent, but because time does not permit me to do justice to two such complex issues.
	In North Korea we have a country that voluntarily, if somewhat belatedly, signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Since then it has systematically and aggressively flouted the provisions of that treaty as well as those of the bilateral agreements that it entered into with the United States in 1994 after its breach of international obligations had been brought to the notice of the United Nations Security Council by the then director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Dr Hans Blix.
	We may not know precisely how far North Korea has progressed towards acquiring nuclear weapons and the means of their delivery, but its intention to do that hardly seems in doubt. Moreover, it is a country which committed an unprovoked aggression against its neighbour; which in the past has been involved in committing acts of international terrorism; and which exports huge quantities of sophisticated military equipment, apparently to anyone who is prepared to pay. There are no grounds for complacency there.
	Nor does the threat to international security stop there. A North Korea that has simply got away with flouting its international obligations and acquired a nuclear arsenal would have a profoundly destabilising effect on the whole north-east Asia and Pacific region. One only has to recall the number of countries in that region that possess the technical capacity to develop nuclear weapons, but have forsworn the right to do so—Japan, South Korea, Taiwan—to realise just how dangerous the situation could become if it is not now checked. The global implications for the whole nuclear non-proliferation regime of a country which, unlike countries like India, Pakistan and Israel, had forsworn nuclear weapons, but has now clandestinely acquired them and had got away with it, would be extremely far-reaching and totally negative.
	So what is to be done now that the International Atomic Energy Agency has, quite rightly, come again to the Security Council to put the facts before it? On one thing there seems to be consensus: a diplomatic solution should be sought before anything else is tried. That must be right. But let us not delude ourselves that the practice of diplomacy with a country such as North Korea is simple or straightforward.
	I recall from my own experience during the last nuclear crisis with North Korea in the early 1990s just how difficult and frustrating it can be. I remember listening to a lengthy expose from the North Korean ambassador to the United Nations about the unprovoked attack his country suffered from the South at the outset of the Korean war. He was slightly at a loss to explain how his country's army ended up in the middle of the next-door neighbour's country; but he was quite sure that North Korea had been the victim of aggression. I remember the expose being repeated several times when I had the temerity to suggest that the facts were not quite as the ambassador had suggested.
	I also recall the frequent accusations of "aggression" and "act of war" if one suggested even that some airing of the issue in the Security Council might be worth while. That is Alice in Wonderland diplomacy, not the normal variety; by that I mean that one is dealing with people who say, "It is so because I say it is so".
	One thing is clear: for diplomacy to be effective, it will require the wholehearted co-operation of China and Russia. Both countries have the capacity either to strengthen or to frustrate any diplomatic initiative. Both have a major interest in avoiding the nuclearisation of the Korean peninsula, in avoiding wider nuclear proliferation in the region, and, above all, in avoiding any escalation of the present critical situation beyond diplomacy. But their co-operation cannot be taken for granted. So, if the United States wishes to avoid being dragged into a bilateral negotiation with North Korea, in which it is pressed to make concessions as a pre-condition for North Korea to stop breaching its international legal obligations—and I have much sympathy with the view of the United States that it must avoid that—it will need to work closely at every stage with China, Russia and its own regional allies and not startle them with unilateral decisions and departures.
	The other point to make about the search for a diplomatic solution is that, now that the IAEA has passed the matter to the Security Council, there is no choice between a multilateral and a bilateral approach. Both tracks must be pursued. An exclusively multilateral approach is not likely to produce results on its own, if only because of North Korea's suspicion and dislike of anything emanating from the United Nations. But nor is an exclusively bilateral approach likely to be fully effective. In hindsight, the US decision in 1994 to drop a multilateral approach and to pursue a purely bilateral one was not a good choice and did not produce lasting results. So bilateral and regional diplomacy need to be fitted together with an approach at the United Nations that addresses the wider, global implications of the problem. They should be mutually reinforcing, not contradictory.
	It is now fashionable in some quarters in the United States to deride multilateral arms control regimes and the inspection systems that go with them. They are not in themselves a panacea, nor do they guarantee effective security. But let us not forget that it was Dr Blix's inspectors who first blew the whistle on North Korea's nuclear programme back in 1993 when they discovered that quantities of nuclear material containing potentially recoverable plutonium were unaccounted for.
	It is the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and North Korea's membership of it that provide the legal base for any action, diplomatic or otherwise, that the international community might want to take. Should diplomatic action succeed in bringing North Korea back into the observance of rules guaranteeing that only civil applications of nuclear activity will be pursued, those same IAEA inspectors will have to police any undertakings entered into. After all, the North Koreans are unlikely to admit American inspectors.
	So we must neither throw out the baby with the bath water nor misconstrue the real nature of the problems that we face over weapons of mass destruction. It is not the international multilateral obligations that are at fault or cause the problems, although they are not, as I said, sufficient on their own to prevent them. The problems arise because certain governments are determined to break their obligations and, above all, because we have yet to find fully effective ways of enforcing the obligations within a framework of international law. It is to that last dilemma that we must now address ourselves more actively and imaginatively than in the past.
	Britain and the European Union have only a modest role to play in handling the problems posed by North Korea. Others have more influence and more clout in that part of the world and are more directly concerned. However, we should not delude ourselves that the outcome will not affect us. That was the mistake made when the League of Nations looked the other way from Japan's activities in Manchuria in the 1930s.
	It will be good to hear from the Minister how the Government see Britain, as a permanent member of the Security Council, and the European Union helping with the active diplomacy that must now, without delay, be put in hand.

Lord Hylton: My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Alton of Liverpool for introducing the debate.
	As my noble friend said, North Korea has suffered under regimes of a Stalinist character ever since the war ended in 1953. Not surprisingly, there are an estimated 1 million prisoners in about 200 camps, out of a population of only 22 million. Many prisoners are subjected to forced labour until they die. Despite or perhaps because of the state philosophy of self-reliance, the country cannot feed itself adequately. For several years, there have been severe food shortages. Famine relief supplies from other countries have been refused or stockpiled for government use.
	Believers of all kinds have suffered greatly. Buddhism is semi-tolerated, and there are 60 temples, although many of those are little more than cultural showplaces. The 3,000 thriving Christian churches that existed in 1945 have been reduced to three. All of them—two Protestant and one Roman Catholic—are in Pyongyang. Even those remaining churches are reported often to be locked and are re-opened only for the benefit of foreign visitors. Some Christians have been executed for the offence of merely owning a bible. It is estimated that Christians comprise about 100,000 of the million people in the prison camps. Former guards who have escaped say that the Christians are often more harshly treated than others.
	The tyranny and persecution that I have described have forced many to flee. Some have tried to leave by boat, but more have been successful in escaping by land into China. There, a large Christian or semi-Christian population of Korean stock is potentially sympathetic to the refugees. Estimates of the number of those who have succeeded in hiding themselves in China vary from 200,000 to 300,000.
	The Chinese authorities recently decided to send back those whom they can discover. Those forcibly repatriated risk torture, execution or the labour camps. Sending them back constitutes a refoulement of genuine refugees who have crossed an international frontier. This winter, China is reported to have sent back 3,200 refugees in two months. Others are still in prison, awaiting forced return.
	Fortunately, China has signed the 1951 UN Convention on Refugees. The Chinese Government are, therefore, responsible for the protection of those who have reached their territory and for meeting their humanitarian needs. In addition, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and China have agreed a bilateral treaty providing for unimpeded access in China and for dispute resolution via binding arbitration. Will Her Majesty's Government urge the UNHCR to seek access to all refugees in China and invoke arbitration, if that request is not granted?
	The British Government are a major donor to the UNHCR and should, if necessary, reinforce their requests by specifically designating part of their donation for the benefit of North Korean refugees in China. Japan is the second largest donor in the world to the UNHCR. If necessary, will the Government ask Japan to make a similar designation of funds? That would certainly have the support of some Japanese non-governmental organisations concerned with refugees in the event of a request to their Government.
	I conclude on the wider issues of basic human rights by asking the Government to study—if they have not already done so—the Statement of Principles on US/North Korean relations. That came from a distinguished group of American citizens and was reported on 18th January. In brief, it asked for a multilateral dialogue with North Korea, discussing simultaneously arms control, humanitarian relief and development, plus human rights. That closely follows the model of the Helsinki negotiations of the 1970s, which so greatly helped to end the Cold War and eventually to bring democracy to the former Soviet Union and its satellites. Will the Government discuss such an approach with the American Government? I very much hope that they will and urge them in that direction.

Lord Chan: My Lords, I add my congratulations to my noble friend Lord Alton of Liverpool on drawing the attention of your Lordships' House to the threat posed by North Korea to international security and to the human rights of its citizens. His record of concern for human rights in communist countries is well known. I consider it a privilege to join him and other noble Lords in this crucial debate that has particular significance for peace in East Asia.
	I shall focus on the desperate plight of North Korean refugees in China and the intense anti-Christian persecution taking place in North Korea. In so doing, I declare my interest as chairman of the Chinese Overseas Christian Mission—a 50 year-old United Kingdom charity now based in Milton Keynes. I also acknowledge the valuable help of Wilfred Wong from the Jubilee Campaign.
	North Korea has one of the worst human rights records in the world because of its autocratic leader who uses torture and forced labour camps to achieve the compliance of his citizens to his rule. Widespread famine since the turn of the 21st century has led to approximately 300,000 refugees fleeing North Korea into China.
	Relationships between China and North Korea are tense. Therefore, the Chinese Government have responded to this large influx of refugees by forced repatriation to North Korea. During December 2002 and January this year, 3,200 North Korean refugees were repatriated. On crossing the border into their homeland these refugees were randomly arrested, tortured for fleeing North Korea, imprisoned and some executed for disgracing the reputation of their country and their leader.
	A Chinese resident living on the North Korean border with China wrote to an overseas organisation describing the plight of North Korean refugees in Northern China:
	"The refugees dare not give themselves up to the Chinese authorities for fear of repatriation. As a result some have died of starvation and exposure. Young female refugees sell themselves as prostitutes and others become slave labourers. When detected by Chinese police, many refugees commit suicide".
	Humanitarian relief groups delivering food and clothing to North Korean refugees in north-eastern China have been hampered by a police crackdown after scores of refugees sought asylum in foreign diplomatic missions in China.
	British human rights groups, including the Jubilee Campaign, have been calling on the United Nations High Commission for Refugees to fulfil its duty to protect North Korean refugees. Stronger international action is needed to convince the Chinese authorities to stop repatriating North Korean refugees. The UNHCR must do more to enforce its bilateral treaty with China through binding arbitration.
	The UNHCR is currently not being allowed free access to North Korean refugees in China. These refugees are being denied their basic rights under international law to apply for asylum through the UNHCR. Like the noble Lords, Lord Hylton and Lord Clarke of Hampstead, I appeal to the Minister to use Her Majesty's Government's influence on the UNHCR to insist on free access to North Korean refugees in China.
	Finally, I want to focus on one of the many aspects of human rights violations in North Korea; namely, intense and systematic anti-Christian persecution by the state. Other speakers have given statistics. I shall focus on 23 Christians in North Korea who were reported to have been executed for their faith in the six months between October 1999 and April 2000. According to a US State Department report from witnesses before the US Congress in April 1999, those imprisoned for their religious beliefs were treated far worse than other prisoners.
	A former prison guard in North Korea testified that prisoners believing in God were regarded as insane. He remembered an incident when a women prisoner was viciously beaten and kicked for praying for a child who was being abused in the prison. I therefore urge the Minister to raise the concerns of Her Majesty's Government with the North Korean authorities about the severe persecution of North Korean Christians and to take other appropriate measures to ensure that this persecution is stopped.

The Lord Bishop of Derby: My Lords, at this time of heightened tension in the Korean peninsula and crisis over the future of Iraq, our thoughts and prayers are with those who are suffering at the hands of unjust, oppressive regimes and with those who are charged with the momentous decisions affecting their future. The opening up, last June, of North and South Korean reunification talks makes the timing of this debate propitious.
	Much of the focus in this short debate has been on human rights violations in the benighted land of North Korea. I am grateful to noble Lords who have shared accounts and evidence about Christians. I want to add my voice to those who have spoken on behalf of those who have endured, and still endure, so much suffering at the hands of the regime of Kim Jong-il.
	The Korean Church grew in the late 18th century through the influence of Chinese Christian writings on young Korean intellectuals; it was initially a Church without clergy or Western mission agencies. In 1785, a French connection led to the first baptisms. There followed two centuries in which the Church was often underground, with many thousands of martyrs.
	During the 20th century, more happily, the Church grew throughout the Korean peninsula. In the south, it continues to be vibrant and numerous: some 12 million out of the total population of 48 million.
	The picture in the north is altogether different. Before the Korean War the north had already suffered Stalinist religious oppression following the Second World War. The US-based Cornerstone Ministries observe that since 1953, the end of the Korean War, some 2,300 congregations have disappeared.
	Accounts shared this evening resonate with the US State Department's 1999 annual report on international religious freedom, which states that in North Korea,
	"genuine religious freedom does not exist".
	Some who have escaped tell of how they had never seen a church or a bible before leaving the country. They tell of how those in camps and prisons are kept in horrific, overcrowded conditions. Lee Soon Ok, aged 55 and not a Christian, spent seven years in a political prison camp. Safe now, I quote her words:
	"The torture and the worst ways of execution were most harsh on the Christians. They didn't give them clothes. They were considered animals".
	Others described witnessing Christians refusing to recant their faith and being publicly, arbitrarily executed.
	I speak as a bishop moved by the suffering of sister and brother Christians, but my concern is far from special pleading—religious liberty must be defended as a universal human right. In contrast, in North Korea to be a Christian is said to be a serious crime.
	Capricious treatment has created a culture of terror. The practice of torture and violations of the right to life appear to be frequent and systemic. Propaganda is pervasive; even freedom of thought is invaded. Any action or statement deemed to fall short of total support for the regime is harshly suppressed.
	We have a duty to speak out on the basis of what reaches us about this intolerable situation. The new talk of possible north/south reunification opens windows of hope and opportunities for the international community to examine first hand these allegations of massive and serial abuses of human rights.
	Prompted by this debate, I spoke today to the Secretary General of the Anglican Communion, Canon John Peterson, who has very recently visited South Korea, where he met with the Reunification Committee of the Council of Churches of South Korea. New work is getting under way. The churches in the south perceive signs of change for churches in the north. There is a long way to go, but let us seize opportunities to obtain first hand possibly more reliable information from the north. The churches are well placed to become channels for aid and for dialogue.
	Let us here, in partnerships, make the new prominence of North Korea on the world agenda an occasion to work together, addressing endemic suffering and persecution wherever they are found.

Baroness Williams of Crosby: My Lords, I add my thanks to those extended to the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for his initiative in prompting this debate, which is of great importance. I add my congratulations also for his persistent commitment to human rights in all parts of the world and the sheer energy and determination with which he pursues the rights of our fellow human beings.
	We have heard extremely moving accounts of the human rights position in North Korea. It is perhaps worth adding to that terrible litany—one which makes even Dante's Inferno seem like an attractive place in comparison—the fact that we should recognise the sheer courage of North Korean Christians and, for all I know, other religious believers too, in being such an example to the rest of us in such terrible conditions and situations.
	Before I turn to the main thrust of my speech I wish to say that I hope that our own Churches will give greater recognition than has been given so far to what the right reverend Prelate so rightly called the martyrs of Korea. It is, indeed, in the tradition of what happened in the 19th century that today in the 21st century in North Korea religious believers maintain their dedication in the face of the most tremendous oppression and bitter treatment.
	Like the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, however, I want to pursue a little further the very serious challenge that North Korea presents to the peace of the world. I refer to one dimension that we have perhaps not talked about quite as much as others. A number of speakers referred rightly to North Korea as a Stalinist state. It is the correct description because it implies an element of paranoia which goes beyond even the cruelties of extreme ideological politics. There is clearly an element of paranoia in North Korea, exemplified not least by the way in which the former leader is treated as some kind of secular god. People are forced literally to worship his corpse because that has become a test of loyalty of a kind that makes the worship of Lenin's corpse look almost modest in comparison.
	It is also important to say that North Korea, even more than the Soviet Union in its worst years, is an almost totally isolated state. There is virtually no exchange of peoples, academics or scientists, between North Korea and the outside world, and no tourism. Their government have chosen deliberately to imprison it within the borders of that country. Frankly—it is easier for me to say this than for the noble Baroness, Lady Symons—it is one of the most difficult countries in the world to influence in any way. It does not wish to be influenced. It divorces itself from the international community. Up to now it is not clear that it wishes to be part in any sense of the international community.
	As did the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, I sum up the security challenges. I believe them to be even worse than he implied. This is a country which has expelled United Nations inspectors; started up a frozen nuclear reactor at Yongbyon; sought to enrich uranium; test fired cruise missiles in the past few weeks alone; proposes to test a medium-range missile, and the so-called Taepo Dong-2 missile which has intermediate capacity and, as the noble Lord, Lord Alton, said, can reach all the major cities of Japan; is currently threatening its neighbours; has left the nuclear proliferation treaty; and has been shown to be out of compliance with UN regulations related to it. It is, I believe, a more dangerous and worse case even than that of Iraq.
	What is particularly troubling is that in the past few weeks North Korea has specifically issued to the world outside clear threats and indicated its willingness to violate its neighbour's air space. Let me quote the chilling words of the spokesman for the Foreign Ministry of North Korea.
	"The United States says that after Iraq, we are next",
	said Mr Ri Pyong-gap, the deputy director of the Foreign Ministry,
	"but we have our own countermeasures. Pre-emptive attacks are not the exclusive right of the US".
	I declare an interest as a member of the Belfer Centre for Science and International Affairs at Harvard. Ashton Carter, the former Assistant Secretary for Defence charged by the United States with special responsibility for discovering the security position and how far it is challenged in North Korea, mentioned a few days ago to the United States Senate that five or six nuclear bombs were within weeks of being built on the basis of the fuel rods removed from the Pyongyang nuclear reactor and now moved out of the scope of such inspection as there might have been had the inspectors not been expelled which makes verification almost impossible. Mr Carter reckons that not only can North Korea make up to five or six nuclear bombs in a relatively short period of time but—I quote his extremely troubling words—
	"North Korea might sell plutonium it judges excess to its own needs to other states or terrorist groups".
	As the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, said, one of the only exports of North Korea happens to be weapons of mass destruction and other sophisticated weapons. It is almost certainly the most dangerous state in the world in terms of its willingness to consider such sales to other countries in succession to the many sales of highly dangerous weapons it has already made.
	What is the impact on the region? The noble Lord, Lord Hannay, referred to this very serious matter. As he said, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan and other neighbours foreswore developing their own nuclear capacity many years ago, and all of them have abided by that commitment. None of them has attempted to build or start at all on the process of developing nuclear weapons. That has been extremely important for peace in the Pacific, not least because there have been some obvious areas of tension, of which China and Taiwan is only one. However, the Japanese were recently so frightened by the evident development of weapons of mass destruction in North Korea and by the means of delivery associated with that, which might bring such weapons within its neighbours' area, that Mr Shigeru Ishiba, Japan's Defence Minister, said:
	"Our nation will use military force as a self-defence measure if North Korea starts to resort to arms against Japan".
	Already, the non-proliferation regime in the Pacific is seriously threatened because of North Korea's threats.
	The evidence produced in studies by Mr Carter and others suggests that North Korea has embarked on serious attempts to produce biological weapons such as anthrax and the plague. I am concerned more about North Korea than about Iraq, because North Korea has no inspectors but it does have the means of delivery.
	What can be done? It is clear that North Korea was troubled by the association of its name with others in the "axis of evil" speech, and regards itself as under attack. I agree with the noble Lords, Lord Hannay and Lord Alton, that we should pursue the diplomatic track, as we are doing. However, we should recognise that North Korea must be persuaded that it cannot be attacked, as the counterpart to moving towards an era of denuclearisation in that country. I do not hold out great hopes of that happening, but we should pursue the possibility of containment much more vigorously than we have done.

Lord Howell of Guildford: My Lords, as so often, the House owes a large debt to the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for raising again an issue of immense timeliness. He did so with a mass and wealth of detail and reinforcing evidence that must have chilled us all—and is right to do so.
	I have no doubt that North Korea is a growing threat to international security. Those who think that the Korean peninsula will be reunited like West and East Germany are living under an illusion; I see no prospect of early or happy unification. The situation is quite different.
	I shall concentrate on the security situation, not because other aspects are not equally crucial but because the noble Lords, Lord Alton, Lord Chan and Lord Clarke, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Derby, have given us as eloquently as anyone could the details of the appalling torture, human rights abuses, refugee problems, religious persecution and all the other medieval and dark habits and customs of this pathetic, isolated but dangerous state.
	The noble Lord, Lord Alton, reminded us about recent security transgressions, such as the resumed uranium enrichment, the reactivated plutonium-based nuclear plant, the jet fighters cruising into South Korean air space, and missiles of various shapes and sizes being fired into the Sea of Japan and near Japan. As several noble Lords said, North Korea is a huge supplier of missiles and weapons of various evil kinds to world markets. Even more notably, it has withdrawn from the non-proliferation treaty at a delicate time, and a nuclear bomb is probably not very far away, as we have heard in reports. We have all been given various estimates; I was told that by July North Korea will have enough plutonium to build five or seven weapons. That is close to what the noble Lord, Lord Alton, said.
	What do we do—a question which the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, rightly raised? When I was in Tokyo the other day, a senior US official sighed and said, "What do we do? There are four options, all of them bad", and went on to wring his hands. The sad thing about all this is that, until a year or two back, or maybe a month back, the North Koreans seemed to be getting a little more co-operative. There were the links with Seoul. There was the Koizumi visit and the bizarre release of the abducted Japanese who were allowed to return to Tokyo for a while. It is in the past few months—maybe it is related to the distraction of Iraq; I do not know—that Pyongyang and the North Koreans have begun to behave like a difficult child wanting attention on the world stage or perhaps seeing what they can get away with while others focus on the Middle East.
	I think that the Americans and all others recognise—I hope that we recognise it—that doing nothing is not an option. It would be easy to hope that it will all go away. However, the "do nothing" option means that others who do not want to start acting will overreact. The pressure will be particularly on the Japanese leadership, although they hate the idea, to go nuclear or at least to develop a full antiballistic missile system to protect themselves. I think that that would be the inevitable and rather rapid consequence of the evidence that the world was going to do nothing very much for the moment.
	On the other hand, I think that the Americans are totally right not to be dragged into a sort of bilateral blackmail session by the North Koreans, although they have been urged to go that way. The truth is that as long as you pay the Danegeld, you never get rid of the Danes. That would certainly be so if the Americans got into that sort of bilateral deal with Pyongyang.
	It seems to me that the sine qua non of any progress on the diplomatic side is that North Korea must close down the HEU and plutonium reactor programme before any question of a deal, compensation, new angles or reassurance is provided in any form of talks, whether bilateral or on the five-and-five basis that others are urging. In other words, diplomacy yes—but the diplomacy must be tough and there must be no nonsense about the Americans being cajoled into signing some non-aggression pact on North Korean terms.
	Nor should the message somehow get out that North Korea is "safe" because it nearly has nuclear weapons and already has missiles. That would of course be sending the most terrible message to the rest of the world that countries that were in the near-nuclear state or had nuclear weapons or were heading that way—and we all know that several others are trying to—somehow become safe and have to be handled with kid gloves. Great care has to be taken, not for the nuclear reason, but because of sheer geography. North Korea is extremely near Seoul. It does not need nuclear weapons. It hardly needs missiles. It just needs to chuck the weaponry that it does have over the border to threaten Seoul, one of the world's greatest cities. So there is an immense danger. Any approach has to bear that in mind.
	What would one suggest? It seems to me that this is, as the Chinese say, both a crisis and an opportunity. It is an opportunity to bring minds in Beijing and in Moscow to focus on the problem of this rogue state. I should like to think that the beginning of a tough diplomacy would be for Beijing, Moscow and Washington to agree to guarantee the stability of the whole peninsula. I think that that probably has to be how the diplomacy starts. Then would have to follow the moves by the North Koreans—that will be the difficult bit for these people in their prickly state—which is to give up their HEU and plutonium programmes and possibly draw down their enormous conglomeration of troops on the DMZ border. That is a place where UK diplomacy—if our diplomats have the energy and the time off from dealing with all their other problems—could play a role. We have an embassy and a conduit passage—a link system for passing messages to the North Koreans. I believe that we could play a useful linking role in this kind of unfolding stage diplomacy.
	After that I believe that it would be time not for giving into blackmail, because it would not be that, but for Japan to restore normal relations and think about compensation. There is still a substantial case in the eyes of both South and North Koreans for some kind of payback for the atrocities which Japan committed during the world war. I believe that that is a reasonable item to resurrect in the context of any sign that North Korea is beginning to see sense and is being co-operative.
	I believe that that is the kind of diplomacy which might be worth trying. I had a chance to talk to Mr Koizumi a few weeks ago. I was immensely impressed by how calmly he was looking at this situation and how he emphasised that one of the keys was partnership with China and that things had to be taken very gradually and carefully which, considering that Tokyo is only 1,000 kilometres from Pyongyang and well within missile range, was creditable.
	We greatly look forward to hearing the noble Baroness's view of how the Government see the possibilities. If that procedure fails, sterner measures will have to be applied. That may mean sanctions, which North Korea said that it would regard as a hostile act. After all, China provides 80 per cent of North Korea's fuel and the US is a major food donor. The ambivalence of the South Koreans over US troops does not help. At first they wanted them to go and now they want them to stay.
	All in all, North Korea must be dealt with. As I said earlier, inaction is not an option. One hopes for compliance—if it is the right sequence of carrots and sticks—and a better life for all Koreans before the world is forced to fall back and consider much tougher measures and the far greater dangers that go with them.

Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean: My Lords, I, too, am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool, for raising the Question of North Korea in your Lordships' House this evening.
	While so much international attention currently focuses on Iraq, he is right to remind us that it is important that we remember that we face in North Korea another serious challenge to international security and to the international efforts to restrain and counter the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. I thank the noble Lord very much for his well-researched and excellent contribution this evening.
	North Korea is a uniquely isolated country, so graphically described by the noble Baroness, Lady Williams. She is absolutely right. It is a country which has often appeared even to make isolation a matter of almost national pride and national philosophy. That self-imposed isolation has continued against the background of the shifting landscape of the rest of the world in the post-cold war era.
	On the principal issues of this debate, proliferation and human rights, North Korea's record is undoubtedly utterly abysmal. All noble Lords this evening have provided substantial evidence of that. Perhaps I may add to some of the points made on the nuclear programme. North Korea admitted in discussions with US officials in early October that it had been pursuing a clandestine uranium enrichment programme. However, we have no hard evidence that North Korea has actually produced nuclear weapons. But I say to the noble Lord, Lord Howell, that we assess that they have sufficient fissile material already to make one or two nuclear weapons and the technical capability to produce them. So it is a very grim picture indeed.
	Perhaps I may pick up on some of the points that the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, made about missiles. North Korea has some hundreds of Scud missiles in service with ranges of up to 500 kilometres. It can produce these itself and, appallingly, they are available for export. Also in service are No Dong missiles, with a range of up to 1,300 kilometres. In August 1998, North Korea launched a three-stage Taepo-Dong 1 as a satellite launch vehicle, which demonstrated that North Korea could produce a missile with a range of 2,000 kilometres and expertise in multi-stage missile technology. The Taepo Dong-2 is also under development and it is assessed that variants could have ranges in excess of 5,000 and 10,000 kilometres. This is indeed an extraordinary weapons programme.
	The noble Lord, Lord Alton, asked about the UK position on negotiations. Engagement with North Korea is enormously difficult, but it is necessary in order to encourage North Korea to become a responsible member of the international community, from which it is so isolated. We decided to establish diplomatic relations with North Korea in December 2000 and to open an embassy in Pyongyang in July 2001. We are convinced that it is better to talk to each other rather than past each other. We are still trying to do so—even given the difficult position described by the noble Baroness, Lady Williams.
	The noble Lords, Lord Alton, Lord Hannay and Lord Howell, and the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, outlined the events that led to the current situation on the Korean peninsula and the threat posed by North Korea to regional stability and international security. As the noble Lord, Lord Alton, implied, the agreed framework was a solution, but only temporary. It contained the problem but certainly did not solve it. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Howell, that the regime has become much more aggressive recently. We believe that that stems from the admission about its uranium enrichment programme last October. Since then, North Korea has taken a number of increasingly provocative steps—as clearly indicated by the noble Lord, Lord Hannay. North Korea insists that the issue can be resolved only with the United States, through bilateral dialogue and agreement on a non-aggression treaty.
	The noble Lord, Lord Alton, asked whether the Government believe that that matter can be dealt with bilaterally. We do not think that it is a bilateral issue between North Korea and the United States, as North Korea claims. I agree strongly with the noble Lord, Lord Howell. The issue is of deep concern to the entire international community and one that we hope can be resolved in a peaceful way through multi-lateral dialogue—as a number of your Lordships indicated. As a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council and a depository state of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the UK has a role to play in resolving the issue alongside and in support of countries with a particular and immediate stake in the stability of the region—the Republic of Korea of course, Japan and the United States.
	I assure the noble Lord, Lord Alton, that we believe in the importance of proceeding with others in the region. We are closely engaged with them as well as with Russia and China. We will play a full role in the United Nations Security Council discussions that are likely to take place in the near future. All speakers in this evening's rather solemn debate would agree with the Government that the Security Council should send a firm message to the North Koreans. We should make it clear that North Korea can choose to co-operate and to engage—but also that if it chooses not to engage, the Security Council is prepared to look at tougher measures.
	Tougher measures are by far the less attractive approach and imply a policy of containment, which would postpone rather than solve the issue. We all want a durable solution. We believe that there remains the possibility of persuading the North Koreans to sit down with their neighbours and the other countries concerned and talk constructively about the future security of the region—in much the way that the noble Lord, Lord Howell, indicated. While we believe that, we can and must look for a peaceful and diplomatic solution to the problem. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, that bilateral pressure has to be applied as well as the multilateral pressure to which many of your Lordships referred.
	I turn to human rights. The noble Lord, Lord Alton, my noble friend Lord Clarke, the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, and the noble Lord, Lord Chan, spoke passionately and knowledgeably about the widespread serious violations of human rights in North Korea, including the appalling use of the death penalty, hideous tortures, the dreadful labour camps, the sanatoria for non-conformists and the extreme religious persecution on which the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Derby focused. The regime has a shocking and brutal human rights record.
	The need to acquire reliable information on human rights is one of the driving factors behind our policy of engagement with North Korea. I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Clarke for his detailed descriptions of human rights abuses. Such evidence is extremely valuable. We raise this issue regularly, although noble Lords will know that the nuclear issue has inevitably taken away the focus from human rights in North Korea. That is regrettable, but it is a fact of life. It has been difficult to engage with the North Koreans on any issue other than nuclear proliferation over the past six months, important though human rights issues are. I assure your Lordships that the concerns expressed in the debate have not been forgotten by Her Majesty's Government. They are integral to any dialogue with North Korea.
	We are also in regular contact with British and international NGOs, including those mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Chan, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Derby. We deeply value the contribution and commitment of the NGOs in contact with us and we will continue to discuss with them ways in which we can work together on these issues.
	A number of noble Lords, in particular my noble friend Lord Clarke, the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, the noble Lord, Lord Chan, and the right reverend Prelate, focused on Christians in North Korea. Most recently, the new ambassador to North Korea, David Slinn, expressed concern about the situation during a high-level introductory call in December last year. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office has financed a human rights training course for North Korean Government officials in the United Kingdom and hopes to build on it with the DPRK authorities this year.
	As your Lordships would expect—I hope it goes without saying, but I want it on the record—I make it clear that we condemn all instances where individuals are persecuted because of their faith or belief wherever they are and whatever religion they practise. I agree with the right reverend Prelate that the issue goes wider than Christians, but as we have heard Christians in particular are suffering deplorable treatment in the camps.
	The noble Lord, Lord Hannay, raised the role of the EU. At last year's meeting of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights the EU presidency statement clearly reflected the European Union's deep concern about continued and serious violations of human rights in North Korea. If the EU decides that there is no evidence of any improvement since last year we will consider further action during this year.
	The noble Lord, Lord Alton, my noble friend Lord Clarke, the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, and the noble Lord, Lord Chan, urged the Government to take action in respect of the 1995 agreement between UNHCR and China. I understand the concerns expressed on this issue. As a bilateral agreement rather than a treaty it is for the parties involved to interpret their obligations. But noble Lords are right that we should exert pressure. I assure my noble friend Lord Clarke that we will continue to encourage greater co-operation on this issue between China and UNHCR at every opportunity.
	Noble Lords also suggested that the Government should designate part of their contribution to UNHCR specifically for North Korean refugees in China. We believe that UNHCR is best placed to decide how and where to deploy these funds within its annual programme, but I draw to your Lordships' attention that DfID responds to direct appeals from UNHCR for assistance with specific short- term refugee emergency situations and long-term reintegration programmes. In 2002, our assistance amounted to almost £4 million. I listened carefully to the points raised by noble Lords on this issue and I undertake to go to my colleagues again in relation to it because I realise the widespread support it has around your Lordships' House.
	This is indeed a terrible regime. Some will ask why we do not act now in the same way as we are acting over Iraq. Our underlying approach to Iraq and North Korea—indeed, to all other proliferation threats—is the same. We will pursue peaceful diplomatic means for as long as it is possible to do so, as was discussed by the noble Lord, Lord Hannay. The fact is that our experience over 12 years of evasion and obfuscation from Iraq tells us that full co-operation is an unlikely outcome.
	We are not approaching North Korea on the basis of 12 years of frustrated effort. The North Koreans tell us that they do not want to develop nuclear weapons. However, they said that at the same time as announcing their withdrawal from the NPT, which may seem perverse and unconvincing to many noble Lords; frankly, it is pretty unconvincing to me as well. We will continue to engage with them and tell them that they are missing an opportunity to put things right with regard to their weapons of mass destruction and in respect of disarmament and the considerable concerns that noble Lords raised in relation to human rights. We may not persuade them. If we do not, we need to be ready to show that we can increase the diplomatic pressure.
	However, we will continue the efforts to convince North Koreans that their security lies not in nuclear weapons programmes, which further isolate them from the international community, but with deeper co-operation and integration with that community. We need to see a dramatic improvement in their record in terms of weapons of mass destruction and their appalling human rights record.

House adjourned at eight minutes before nine o'clock.